


Caught Inside

by t_fic (topaz), topaz, topaz119 (topaz)



Series: Caught Inside [1]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Challenge: SPN Big Bang, Community: spn_j2_bigbang, M/M, Multi, Podfic Available, Surfing, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-15
Updated: 2009-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:24:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/t_fic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz119
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a year since Steve left, and three months since Jensen's last talked to him, but if there's one thing Jensen knows, it's that Steve's invitations never expire. When Jensen finally decides to take Steve up on his offer, though, there's a strange guy in the house and nothing's like Jensen expected it to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Caught inside_ is what surfers call being stuck right where the waves are breaking, so that every time you come up for air, you get pounded back down.

  


**\-- 1 --**

Kahului airport is small, shockingly so after the chaos of LAX, as though the nonstop flight's brought him much further than from Los Angeles to Maui. Jensen shoulders his duffel and heads for the National counter, threading his way through groups of people greeting each other with leis and hugs. He's been to Hawaii once before, but that was Oahu, and he was 14, on a Christmas break trip with his family, and all he really remembers is hanging out on the beach with Josh, hitting on girls, thousands of miles from home and feeling like anything was possible.

A dozen years ago, but he feels about a million years older now.

The air is soft and clean, the wind fresh off the ocean, and though he's tired from traveling all day, the long, tropical twilight is still bright enough that it's easy to follow the small highway south, then west along the coast. Steve's directions aren't overwhelmingly clear--no surprise there--but Jensen sees the street he needs right as he passes it, and is able to turn around without too much trouble. The neighborhood looks quiet and neat, nothing extravagant or up-scale, just a bunch of small, older houses plunked down on the flat land between the mountains and the ocean. He double-checks the number next to the front door as he pulls off the street onto the worn-down grass that clearly serves as the parking area, and feels fairly confident as he walks up to the small, wood-frame house.

His knock is answered with a "C'mon in," from somewhere beyond the screen door, but the voice doesn't sound familiar, and he steps in hesitantly, calling out, "Hello? Steve? It's Je--" He stops as a short guy in jeans and a threadbare t-shirt emerges from the hallway.

"Hey," the guy says, and Jensen says, "I'm looking for--this is Steve Carlson's place, right?"

The guy's nodding. "Yeah, this is Steve's place. Jensen?" Jensen nods, and the guy shrugs. "Steve's working down at the café 'til 8 or so, maybe later if someone asks him to sit in. I'm Chris. He know you were coming?"

And, well, there really isn't an answer for that. Steve's told him to come anytime, more than once, but Jensen's never quite been able to say yes, hasn't ever said it, not even when he'd gotten home late the other night after another round of annoying clubs and annoying not-quite-friends. He hadn't said anything, had just looked at Travelocity, for the hell of it, and there was a fare that didn't make his stomach drop (though that might have been mostly because it was past closing time and he wasn't firing on all cylinders by a long shot), and now there's a guy he doesn't recognize leaning up against the kitchen bar in Steve's house and looking right at home and anything Jensen thought he might have known is pretty much in the trash.

***

The guy, Chris, tells him to stick around; offers him a beer, which he accepts, and a joint, which he doesn't--he doesn't smoke up with people he doesn't know, and besides, Chris's expression isn't half as welcoming as his words seem like, though he's not unfriendly, either, exactly. Probably a lot more friendly than Jensen would be in his position, Jensen thinks, holding the cold bottle by the neck and looking out at the green of the overgrown back yard and the mountains behind it while Chris fiddles with a guitar and works on his own beer.

The sun's been down for a while when Jensen hears the front door open and a familiar voice calling out, "Hey, Chris, we got company?"

"Looks like," Chris calls back, and then Steve's there, features hard to make out in the moonlight, but Jensen stands up and says, "Hey," and Steve stares at him for a second and then laughs, pulling him into a hug.

"Jen," he says, his arms solid and strong, and Jensen feels himself relax a little. "I gotta say I'd pretty much given up on you ever actually coming."

Jensen laughs awkwardly. "I... probably should've called first. Made sure it wasn't, y'know, a bad time or whatever."

Steve makes a rude noise and pulls him into another hug, like it hasn't been a year since they've seen each other and three months since they last talked. But that's Steve for you. "You must be hungry," Steve says, pulling him back into the small house, and Chris picks up his guitar and his beer and follows. "I brought food, there's plenty."

Dinner is chicken satay and grilled fish--onaga, Steve says--and rice and stir-fried vegetables, all tipped out of to-go boxes to mix haphazardly on mismatched plates. There's not much Jensen needs to say to bring Steve up-to-date on his life--he wouldn't be here if anything beyond the occasional guest spot on crappy cable shows had panned out since he left _Days_ \--and it's pretty clear what's new with Steve. Chris doesn't talk much, at least not while Jensen's been around, but he's clearly a fixture, and yeah, that might have been something Steve could have mentioned. Then again, he probably would have, if Jensen had called.

***

It's been a long day, what with getting up at ass o'clock to get to the airport, and Jensen's falling asleep on the couch before he even finishes eating. And maybe that's not such a bad thing, really, because yeah, he hasn't seen Steve in a while, but getting shown to a guest bedroom while Chris strolls on into Steve's wasn't exactly what Jensen had in mind when he got on the plane this morning. Not like that issue's going to go away overnight, but... whatever. Scarlett O'Hara may have been a shallow little bitch, but she wasn't stupid.

He wakes in unfamiliar darkness and finds his way to the bathroom. There's another door off the hallway; it's closed. He goes back to the couch, picks up the light blanket that had been spread over him, and lies down again. He's trying not to listen, for voices or anything else, but there's nothing to hear except the trees and shrubs rustling in the never-ending breeze.

***

Jensen half wakes up when Steve pads through the living room in the dim light of dawn, the sound of a door closing unmistakable in the quiet. He's not sure how long after that Chris wanders through, but Jensen would recognize the sound and smell of coffee being made if he were blindfolded and drunk. It doesn't take him long to brush his teeth and splash some water on his face, and find his way to the caffeine.

Breakfast with Chris and no Steve--who Chris says is out surfing, in a tone that says it's something Jensen should already know--is less than relaxing, though the coffee is undeniably good. When Jensen says he'll look for a hotel room, though, Chris snorts and shakes his head.

"Hotels here are a million bucks a night. There's an old sunroom that's got a bed in it--it's full of guitars and crap right now, but we can clear it out."

That's not the most inviting offer Jensen's ever gotten, but when he tries to decline, Chris just pins him with a look. "I know you and Steve haven't talked much recently, but you have met him, right? " he says, with enough attitude to be insulting, but not enough that Jensen feels like the punch he feels coiled up in his shoulder is justified. "You think he'd let you go to a hotel?"

"I'll try not to get in your way," Jensen finally says. "I probably won't be staying very long." Chris doesn't argue with that, and the conversation kind of dies out at that point. When he finishes his coffee, Jensen heads for the shower, and after that he figures even wandering around town is going to be better than hanging around waiting for Steve to get back. Chris apparently spends his time writing music or something; Jensen doesn't really want to know, since it only underscores how much more Chris belongs here than he does.

Once Jensen's outside, it's harder to stay annoyed. Not impossible, but harder. The air is warm but not too hot, and clean, and there are flowers everywhere. The bare-bones directions Chris offers-- _turn left and you can't miss it_ \--turn out not to be based entirely on Chris's attitude and at least some in that there's all there is, really. He thinks some of the streets look familiar from getting lost the night before, but now, in the sun and on foot, he can see that there's an actual town. Tiny--not much more than a collection of buildings straggling in a T along the coast road and one main street--but real, an odd mix of art galleries and tourist trash, organic groceries and an honest-to-god hardware store, like he hasn't seen since the last time he visited with his grandparents in the flat Texas country.

The Pacific's there, too; dominating the view. Even when he can't see it, he knows it's there, and it's different somehow from the same ocean that he doesn't even notice anymore in California. He stands at the western edge of the buildings and watches the waves move in toward shore. Nothing big; Steve must be somewhere else. Jensen finds himself wondering idly why it is that he's lived near the ocean for years now and never treated it as anything but an outdoor party venue.

On the way back to Steve's, he barely avoids being run over by a group of guys coming out of what he'd thought was a not-yet-open café at the one big intersection in town. They're loud, laughing and cat-calling back through the door, but smiling at Jensen as they crowd past, t-shirts and board shorts and flip-flops making even the ones a lot older than Jensen look a decade younger. Impulsively, he grabs the door before it closes after the last of the guys--really tall, with floppy dark hair--walks out.

After the full-on sun, inside it's hard to see. A deep voice says, "Hi, can I help you?"

Jensen hesitates, blinking furiously, and his eyes adjust enough to see the lone figure at a table, staring expectantly at him. Otherwise, the room is deserted. "Uh, hi, sorry. Are you--the door was open."

The guy smiles at him, broad and friendly. "Not officially, but as long as I'm here, I'm not really ever closed."

Jensen nods, looking around curiously. The small room is nothing much more than a bar and a dozen tables with a tiny stage in the corner, but it's got a vibe about it that Jensen likes. Friendly.

"So," the guy says. "Can I get you anything?"

"Oh," Jensen answers. "Uh, I was--I had something earlier, but--"

"Coffee?" Before Jensen even answers, the guy's behind the bar, reaching for a carafe and a thick, white mug..

"Yeah, that'd be great," Jensen says, and it is: nothing fancy, but smooth and rich, and strong enough that Jensen can almost feel the caffeine hitting his bloodstream. Whatever else is or isn't happening on this trip, at least his standard for coffee is being met.

"Sorry I don't have much actual food--it's either your basic surfer's special or… well, that's about it."

"The surfer's special…?" Jensen's not really hungry, just curious.

"Scrambled eggs and Spam."

There's a split second of utter silence, because, seriously, what the hell do you say to _that_ , Jensen thinks, and then the guy's laughing, a low, rich chuckle that's almost a purr.

"Jeff," he says, holding out a hand. His grip is warm, strong, as direct as his smile, and it takes no time to cover the basics: Jensen's staying with a friend in town who's surfing at the moment, which is where Jeff would damn straight rather be except he's got to get his books dealt with.

"I should let you get back to that, then," Jensen says, starting to put the mug down.

"Nah, man, you're fine," Jeff says. "Your buddy'll be up soon; the crowd that probably ran you over was on their way down. Winds pick up in the late morning around here, enough to get some serious action for the windsurfers. Everybody else gives way around ten or eleven."

He waves vaguely at the empty room. "Grab a table, chill. I'll give you a pass on the Spam, since it's your first day in town--the girl who waits tables for me at night spends her days preaching the gospel of organic. Got some of her muffins and stuff here, if that works for you."

Anything labeled organic usually makes Jensen want to run screaming, but given the alternative, he lets Jeff hand him something that looks vaguely normal and settles with plate and mug at a table by the window.

He wishes he had a book with him. He could call someone, but that seems sort of obnoxious. A book would be lower-key, while still giving him something to do instead of sitting here like an idiot. He drinks his coffee and pulls the muffin apart on the small plate.

Jeff goes back to his accounting, and Jensen's thinking about taking off when the door opens and Steve walks in, saying, "Pretty, pretty waves this morning, man."

Jensen looks up, and Steve stops. "Jensen?"

"Oh, he's one of yours, is he?" Jeff says.

"Yeah," Steve says. "He is." He smiles at Jensen, and lets the door close behind him. "He been treating you right, Jen? I'd hate to have to call him out..."

Jeff clearly finds the concept of Steve picking a fight as ludicrous as Jensen does, which is good, because if Steve had changed that much, Jensen really did come to the wrong place.

"Mike's not far behind me," Steve's saying to Jeff. "You want me to fire up the range?"

"Might as well," Jeff answers. "I've got about another ten minutes of patience with this financial shit but it'd be a shame to waste it."

Steve laughs but Jensen thinks he sounds a little off.

"Hang tight for a couple of minutes, Jen?" Steve says, and it's not Jensen's imagination at all, Steve really is feeling awkward. With a jolt, Jensen realizes it's because of _him_. And that's not something he's ever seen before, not even when they were walking away from each other.

"Yeah," Jensen says. "I'm good."

Steve disappears into the back. Jeff mutters under his breath and sorts through his papers. Jensen drinks his coffee and plays with the muffin and watches the people wander by outside the window until Steve comes back out, juggling his plate and silverware while he pours himself a mug of coffee and tops off Jeff's and Jensen's, too.

It's a lot of motion for a guy Jensen once described as never having met a couch he couldn't take over, but then again, it's the first time they've been alone in almost a year and maybe Steve doesn't know what to say either.

"You look good," Jensen finally says. It's trite, maybe, but it's also the truth. Steve's darkly tan, hair bleached lighter than Jensen remembers, still damp from the ocean, and beyond the superficial, he looks like he's happy.

"You don't," Steve answers, blunt and honest as always. "Still too handsome for your own good, but..."

Jensen half-shrugs. His face is his meal-ticket, that's never been a secret.

"Jen," Steve says, in between bites of the previously mentioned scrambled eggs and Spam, which looks about as appetizing as Jensen had imagined. Steve's shoveling it in like he's starving, though. "Why now?"

Jensen finishes his coffee before answering. "I don't know," he finally says, getting up to reach for the carafe. Jeff's disappeared; Jensen can hear noises from the back, but he's not sure when he left. "I guess... I just, I came home the other night, and I realized, fuck, I haven't done any work I liked since... ever, seems like, and I go out and party and I don't even know the people I'm hanging out with and I don't really want to know them, and I got to thinking about when was the last time I really enjoyed being with someone and, dude, it was you."

He doesn't really need more coffee, but he needs _something_ to do so that he doesn't have to have this conversation face-to-face. But it's Steve, who can out-wait anything and anyone, so when Jensen finally turns around, Steve's still watching him.

"C'mon," Steve says, standing up. He drops his plate and stuff in the sink behind the bar, and pours himself more coffee. "Bring it," he says, motioning to the mug Jensen's still holding. "I'll bring 'em back later." He yells back to Jeff that they're going, that he'll be in later to deal with the suppliers, and follows Jensen out the door.

It's still brighter than hell outside, and for supposedly being paradise, Main Street, Paia looks disappointingly like every town Jensen's spent his life trying to get out of. Except of course, when he turns to follow Steve and the deep blue of the ocean overwhelms everything else.

Steve doesn't say anything, just starts off down the street, with his same long, easy stride. Jensen thinks about asking where they're going, but he doesn't really care, so he keeps his mouth shut and falls into step. He half-expects Steve to take them down to the long curving beach he can see beyond the edge of town, but Steve turns the other way, dodging back through some scrubby, sandblasted-looking trees, twisting and turning until they come out to a clearing with a wide-open view of a rocky bay.

Jensen stands there and lets the sun and the wind do their thing. He wants this, wants _Steve_ , and when he boarded that plane in LA, right up until he'd walked in the door at the house he'd thought it was his for the taking. He knows why he came, but then he looks at Steve and it all falls apart.

"Okay," Steve says, quiet and steady. "So, Chris."

Jensen wants a do-over. He wants to go back to the other night, go the fuck to bed instead of buying that damn plane ticket, get drunk and get in a fight, or take off for Europe, or even beat his head against the wall, but not end up here, now, with Steve saying _Chris_ like that. "You could've told me you were living with someone."

Steve rubs his hand across his mouth. "'Living with' is a bit of an exaggeration. And, y'know, if you'd called, I could've said something."

"Yeah, okay." Jensen shrugs. "And who is it who always said you don't need to call ahead, just come, come anytime, come and stay, Jen, it's Maui, you'll love it and there's always room for you?"

Steve sighs. "There is room. I am glad you're here. Dude, I'm glad to see you. You weren't happy in LA, I could see it the whole last year. This thing with Chris, it... man, I'm still glad you're here."

 _No, really, let's still be friends._ Jensen's mouth is sour, and not only from the coffee. "You guys been together a while?" he says, gritting his teeth. " He seems..." He can't quite get nice out, though it's probably true, at least in any other circumstances. Steve wouldn't be with him if he were a prick.

"It's--I mean, it's not, I don't even, he lives in, like, Nashville and LA, he's only here part-time. I don't even know where it's going or _if_ it's going."

"He seemed pretty at home," Jensen points out.

"We met last fall. He was here on vacation, and we hooked up. He's a musician too, we started writing together, and, you know, when I invited him to stay it didn't take him a year to show."

Jensen takes a breath, lets it out slowly. "Okay. Okay. I'm an idiot, I think that's established, but I'm guessing his invite didn't come framed in you packing your shit and clearing out."

Steve's quiet for a long couple of seconds before he says, "Okay, fair enough. I'm still glad you're here, and--I know this is really fucking awkward, but are you... I'd really like it if you could stay. For however long."

Jensen wants to say no, but hell, it's Maui, right? At least he's not in LA. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

***

Steve might be sure, but Jensen's willing to bet Chris isn't going to be nearly as welcoming when they walk back into the house with the news that Jensen's not turning right back around and leaving. He's ready to collect on that unspoken bet when he sees something flicker in Chris's eyes at the news, but Chris only shrugs and cocks his head at Steve.

"Hell," he says, a full-on smirk curving his mouth. "Guess we're finally gonna clear out that dump." Steve groans and Chris laughs. "No way, Carlson. You can't actually be expecting your buddy here to sleep on that couch?"

"It's not that bad," Steve says, looking at Jensen. "You were out pretty deep when I left this morning..."

"Oh, no," Chris says. "One night, jet-lagged and with a contact high from the good stuff doesn't mean anything."

There's more going on there than just hospitality, and Jensen doesn't have a clue what it is, so he keeps his mouth shut. Steve looks like he wants to argue, but finally sighs.

"Yeah, you're right." He walks past Jensen to a door on the far side of the living room, opening it and cursing under his breath. Chris smirks. Curious, Jensen goes over to join Steve and almost feels like groaning himself when he sees all the crap piled in the room. It's not even a real room; it looks like it started off life as a lanai or something. There's a futon and maybe a small table underneath everything, but he's not really sure.

"Okay," Jensen says. "I know you're, uh, organizationally challenged--" Chris snorts somewhere behind them "--but this is pretty impressive, even for you."

"Hey," Steve says, mildly. "It came with the house." Jensen wanders in, sidestepping a couple of stacked amps, and pokes at a box of books and papers covered with Steve's chickenscratch handwriting. Steve sighs again. "Okay, yeah, some of it's mine."

"I need more caffeine before we deal with this," Chris says, heading for the small kitchen. Jensen isn't exactly sure why he's so gung-ho on making a place for Jensen to stay. He figures it probably has something to do with how the spare room is about as far away from the other bedroom as possible, and he can't really argue with that.

"You sure a hotel isn't gonna be better?" he asks, low.

"Not unless you want to be somewhere else, man," Steve answers.

"Nah," Jensen says, after a long couple of seconds. "I'm okay." He could probably say it with more enthusiasm, but Steve doesn't push him on it and that's good enough.

***

It ends up being mostly Jensen and Chris who clear the room out; Chris shoves Steve toward the bedroom after an hour or so, to catch some sleep before he goes back and does whatever he does at Jeff's during the evening. As much as Jensen doesn't want to admit it, it's easier without Steve. Part of that is because he and Chris just start tossing shit out, but the rest is because Chris ends up having a bitchy streak a mile wide that feeds into Jensen's inner snark.

They get the room to the point that they can shove the rest of the boxes into the cheap, pressboard cabinet that's acting as a wardrobe--Jensen didn't bring so many clothes that he needs to worry about how much closet space he has--and he doesn't guess Steve'll care that he's wedging odds and ends up on the shelf. Chris clears out a corner for guitars and amps, then gets distracted leafing through staff paper littered with bits and pieces of unfinished songs.

"Those yours, or Steve's?"

Chris looks up. "Steve's, mostly. Couple of these we were workin' on together, a while back. I mean, yeah, I've got my own mess. But there's some good stuff here, should get him working on it again."

"I thought Steve was playing a lot, over here," Jensen says. "That's the impression I got, I mean."

"Yeah." Chris shrugs. "He plays down at Jeff's a lot, over at a couple places in Lahaina some, too. But he mostly plays old stuff--stuff he wrote a while ago, I mean. It's--this place isn't the Taj Mahal or anything, but it's Maui. It ain't cheap. It's not easy to make time for writing."

"I guess," Jensen says, but that doesn't really sound like Steve. As long as Jensen's known him, he's always writing. Then again, Jensen's cleaning out Steve's spare room so he'll have some place to sleep, so, really, what does he know anyway? He stacks the papers neatly in the box and goes to help Chris haul the last bags of trash out to Steve's old van.

"The dump's not too far away," Chris says, digging around for flip-flops and car keys. "No sense having all this shit sitting around until pick-up day."

"Get it the hell out of here before he starts going through it for stuff he can't live without," Jensen agrees. "Want some company?"

Chris looks a little surprised, but nods, and Jensen climbs into the passenger seat before either one of them can change their minds. They ride out past old sugar cane plantations and up into the foothills. Chris doesn't exactly play tour guide, but he points out a couple of places, waves his hand up at the mountains as they pull into the dump.

"Haleakala," he says. "They bus the tourists up, but it's worth it even so." He drags the last box out of the van and tosses it on the trash heap. "Steve'll get you up there at some point."

Jensen wants to ask if it's part of the standard welcome package, but it sounds bitchy even in his own head and he's not in the mood to start something with Chris. On the way back, Chris pulls over on the shoulder of the road, next to a rickety old shack that Jensen eyes dubiously.

"Trust me," Chris says, clapping him on the back. "The whole island would grind to a halt without a plate lunch." Jensen doesn't think Chris dislikes him enough to give himself food poisoning, too, so he follows Chris's lead and they end up standing under an umbrella eating paper plates of chicken and shrimp and a couple of scoops of rice. Before they leave, Chris goes back and orders a shave ice, hands it to Jensen and opens the driver's door.

"What's this for?" Jensen asks, juggling the freezing cold paper cone as he gets in.

"We can share," Chris says. He pulls a joint from his back pocket and lights it before merging back onto the road. "Take turns," he adds, around a lungful of smoke.

"Is this the part where you tell me you're a better driver fucked up than you are sober?" Jensen knows he's got a mildly disapproving look on his face, but he takes the joint when Chris hands it over.

"Nah," Chris says. "But it is the part where I tell you I've driven this road a _hell_ of a lot more fucked up than I'll be from splitting a joint."

"How comforting," Jensen deadpans. Controlled substances notwithstanding, Chris is paying reasonable attention to the road, but when Jensen licks his hands where the shave ice is melting over them, lurid red and toothache-sweet, even on top of the smoke, he can feel the quick flickering glances. He offers Chris the shave ice with as innocent of a look as he can plaster on his face, and it's a bitch of a thing to do with a friend's boyfriend, with _Steve's_ boyfriend, but hell, he's not the one who came up with any of this.

Chris manages to get them home without killing anything or anyone. Jensen follows him into the house, blinking at the shade after the sunshine outside. He's buzzed and loose, a little sleepy; takes the beer Chris hands him because why not, though the first swallow tastes truly disgusting on top of the sweet stickiness still in his mouth from the ice.

It's the middle of the afternoon, and aside from moving a few boxes he's accomplished jack shit today, and starting in drinking isn't likely to change that for the better. On the other hand, hell, he's on vacation, right? What else is he supposed to be doing?

Not a whole lot, he figures, walking into his brand-new, solo bedroom and raising the bottle again.

 

***

He wakes up starving--his body clock is _fucked_ \--but when he stumbles out of the bedroom looking for something to eat, it's to find a scrawled note from Steve telling him he's welcome to forage for himself or join them at Jeff's. "Them" is the problematic part; Jensen's tempted to eat what he can find and stay away, but he's supposed to be an adult, so he should probably act like it and not sit in his bedroom and sulk.

He showers quickly and doesn't spend a lot of thought on what clothes he pulls on. From what he's seen of the town and of Jeff's place, nobody's going to be paying much attention. There doesn't seem to be much of a reason to drive, either; it'd taken all of five minutes in the morning to walk along the road to town. Out of habit, he checks his phone for messages, but isn't surprised when there aren't any. Nobody he's been hanging out with lately is going to miss him enough to track him down, and his agent's assistant is probably thrilled to not have to take his calls in the first place.

There's still a surprising amount of traffic and people are wandering aimlessly along the sidewalk. The door to the cafe is open; crowd noises and music and good smells spilling out to greet him before he even edges his way inside. Steve's up on the tiny stage--Chris, too, which is almost enough to turn Jensen right around, but Steve looks up and catches sight of him. He smiles like he hadn't been expecting Jensen to show, and it's too late to run.

"No pouting," Jensen mutters to himself.

"Oh, baby, you can pout at me anytime." A tiny redhead holding a tray full of glasses grins at him as she elbows her way through the crowd.

"Down, girl," Jeff says, from the other side of the bar, and she sticks her tongue out at him. Jeff waves Jensen over, which means he's really stuck staying, so he pastes the _hey, happy to be here_ look on his face and works his way over to the bar. Jeff pulling a beer out of the ice and handing it to him as soon as he gets there goes a long way toward making the sentiment less of an acting job and more like reality.

"Sorry," Jeff says. "We're working on not scaring the new kids as soon as they walk in the door, but it's slow going with Miss Danneel."

"Oh, please," the girl says, her grin unrepentant. "I was totally nice. And I need three more drafts and a couple of fingers of tequila. Call brand." She turns her smile on Jensen while Jeff starts pulling the beers. "You didn't mind, did you, sugar?"

"Dani," Jeff says and she sighs.

"Right, right," she says, rolling her eyes. "Behaving now. You meeting anyone? 'Cause we're a little strapped for space tonight..." There aren't actually that many people in the place, but it's not a big room to start with, and everybody's spread out and occupying all the tables.

"Jensen's here for a while, staying with Steve," Jeff says, before Jensen can answer and Danneel _mmm's_ thoughtfully.

"That's not going to help with a table," she says. "Unless you're okay drinking standing up?"

"I was kinda hoping for some food," Jensen answers. The beer's going straight to his head. "Even one of those muffins from this morning would be good."

"Oh, you're the muffin guy--you made Sandy's day," Danneel says, catching Jensen by the elbow and towing him around the bar. Jeff's distracted by somebody yelling in from the door, so Jensen's on his own. "She'll make room for you." They stop in front of a couple sitting at a table that's more like a tray, tucked in right at the end of the bar. Danneel introduces him and hands him over with a flourish before heading back to pick up her order.

Sandy's as small as Danneel, but there's still not much room at the table because the guy she's with--Jared, Danneel said--is big. Tall, and young, and when he smiles, Jensen recognizes him as one of the guys who'd nearly trampled him earlier that morning. His smile still makes Jensen feel a hundred years old. They squeeze over and Jared stretches out a long leg to snag a chair from the table next to them and Jensen figures he might as well get something to eat. If he had to do it over, he'd probably stay in, but it's too late to do anything about it now.

Sandy turns out to be on a break, so she leaves after a couple of minutes, promising to bring Jensen food. Jared must be about as laid-back as they come; he doesn't take any offense when Jensen doesn't feel like being chatty. Because he really fucking _doesn't_ , not when he can't avoid what's going on up on stage. Chris's voice is strong and soulful, more country than Steve's, but they share the stage like they grew up on it together, blending rather than competing and there's not much Jensen can do about it.

So, he sits and eats what Sandy puts in front of him. Jeff sends over a second round and Danneel stops by to hiss something catty to Jared about the guy in neatly-pressed khakis and a button-down who's more or less sucking up all of Sandy's attention. Jensen doesn't really care, but it's better than thinking about Steve or Chris. Or Steve _and_ Chris. He finds himself paying a little more attention to the mini-drama at the table than he planned, but it's worth it to actually be in a conversation when Steve takes a break and heads on over.

***

For all that it's a weird situation, awkward any way he tries to spin it, Jensen finds it way too easy to slide into the routine of Steve and Chris's life. Sleep late, smoke up when Steve comes back in from surfing, lie around during the day, hang out at Jeff's at night. Jared's usually there, same table in the corner, and apparently since Jensen sat there that first night, that's where he's supposed to sit all the time. Jared's not pushy about it or anything; it's just been a while since anyone's automatically assumed that Jensen's a part of their crowd. It's a little odd, but fine; it gives Jensen something to do while Steve's singing and somebody who's not Chris to talk to. Sandy never lets either of them finish a beer before she's bringing another round; Jeff leaves his coffee there, and his cigarettes, so he's there off and on as the nights go on; and Danneel gravitates there, whether or not she's working. Between the four of them, Jensen's pretty sure there isn't a piece of gossip in town that he hasn't heard.

Mostly, he kicks back and listens, which, as long as he treats it like researching for a character, isn't as boring as he expects it to be. He knows that Danneel used to be Jeff's full-time waitress, but now only comes in a couple of nights a week, and that she and Jared are always talking a completely foreign language of waves and planing and loops and anklebiters. He could ask for a translation--he gets the feeling Jared would go into ridiculous detail, he's that kind of a guy--but Jensen's really not that into it.

He figures out that Jeff owns the house Steve's living in, plus one other place in town, as well as the house semi-attached to the bar on the oceanside.

"It's a big thing around here," Jared explains, with one of the painfully earnest expressions that Jensen wants to laugh at, but instead finds himself sucked in by. "Nobody likes it when property goes to developers. They like to keep it local."

"Right," Jeff says, rolling his eyes. "And guess who lets himself get suckered into the fixer-uppers, especially the ones that are barely a step up from being condemned."

Jared laughs, like it's a familiar complaint, and everything keeps rolling right along.

There's the hissing whenever Sandy's boyfriend shows up, because nobody likes a poser from upcountry walking in and looking down on them all for living and working in the hippie town, especially not when he's making a killing off buying as much property as he can and flipping it to the highest bidder, no matter what they want to put on the land. Jensen's not exactly sure when Sandy has time to be with the guy, because whenever he sees her, she's always going full-speed, everything from being out on the floor at Jeff's or helping Steve or dealing with her catering, or any one of a half dozen other things. Her cell phone is always out and Jensen wouldn't be surprised if half the island's on her speed-dial.

He works out that Chris has come and gone a couple of times and that the general consensus is that Steve's pretty okay with it but nobody knows for sure, because, damn, that guy is _good_ at saying only what he wants to say. It doesn't surprise Jensen at all that Steve keeps his shit to himself--he's always been private like that. In a way, it's a relief, that there's something about Steve that he still knows.

***

Jensen and Chris get along okay, as long as Jensen doesn't think too hard about how he'd expected things to go before he actually walked into Steve's house. When he does, Chris is happy to meet him halfway with the bitchy comments, which Jensen can at least respect.

Chris doesn't say anything the day Steve follows Jensen east along Hana Highway to the airport to return the rental car. Jensen's been there for ten days; every time he mentions anything to do with LA, Steve changes the subject smoothly enough that Jensen's sure that he and Chris are the only ones who notice.

It's not what Jensen wanted, but it's a break from real life. He tells himself it'll be enough.

***

The next week, Steve has a gig in Lahaina, with Chris sitting in. Jensen tags along and ends up out behind the club with his dick down the throat of a wannabe surf bum, with ripped abs and eyes that are vacant and blurred, little more than advertisements for the local, homegrown bud.

Nobody says anything until they're back in the van, all nice and chummy, Steve and Chris up front and Jensen lounging in back, and even then it's only Chris smirking and drawling, "Hell, at least one of us had a little fun tonight."

"Some of us don't have our fun on tap," Jensen answers. Chris's grin turns sharp and hungry and Jensen tells himself he doesn't really care that Steve's avoiding his eyes in the rear-view mirror. When they hit the edge of town, though, and he can see at least one light on at the cafe, he sits up straight and says, "Drop me at the corner."

Steve does look at him then, and Jensen meets his eyes squarely. He's really fucking not in the mood to go back and watch the happy couple settle in for the night and he's pretty sure Steve figures it out. If he hasn't, Chris can fill him in. It's late, way past three, and they haven't seen a car since they got ten minutes outside Lahaina. Steve doesn't say anything as Jensen gets out, not even when Jensen smacks Chris on the arm as he's sliding out and says, "Not that I think you would, but don't wait up, kids."

Truth be told, it's late enough that Jensen's a little surprised Jeff hasn't just left a light on by accident. The door's not locked so he half-knocks and sticks his head in. Jeff's still there, coffee mug in hand, and Jared's sprawled out across three chairs, with a row of empties in front of him, the fruity Australian beer that nobody but Jared will touch. The place has been cleaned up for the night and most of the lights are off, but they look like they're settled in for a while yet.

Jeff nods at him and says, "You're on your own," waving at the bar. Jensen grabs a bottle out of the cooler and drags a chair over to the table.

Jensen doesn't really have much to say; getting out of the car was almost as much of a surprise to him as it was to Steve, but he's fine just joining the lazy conversation. It was a quiet night in town and the weather is looking good for the next few days and Jeff might have to call somebody about his produce delivery. Jeff asks how Steve's gig went and Jensen says he thinks it was fine. Jared checks the time and groans, hauls himself to his feet and says something about how Jeff's evil, keeping him out until four when he knows Jared has to be in Lahaina with the accountants before eight. He slaps Jeff on the back and says, "Later, man," to Jensen and is gone before his words actually register with Jensen.

"Accountant?" Jensen says, staring at where the door's swinging shut, like that's going to explain how he just heard one of Jeff's surf-bum friends say what Jensen thinks he heard him say.

"Accountants," Jeff says. "Plural. And probably agents and marketing directors and who the fuck knows what else. Maybe a stylist, which I'd pay cold, hard cash to see how that would go down." Jensen's face must look as blank as his brain feels, because Jeff snickers and says, "I guess we forgot to mention the defending-world-champion thing."

"Uh, yeah?"

"Small towns, y'know?" Jeff laughs. "We're so damn used to everybody knowing everybody else's business, we forget to do formal introductions."

"So, I'm guessing he's not the kid down the road who hangs out and has big dreams for someday."

"No, more like the kid down the road who walked out of high school and into the pro windsurfing circuit." Jeff reaches back and snags the carafe off the bar and fills his mug again. "Hasn't put a foot wrong since."

"Okay," Jensen says. "Good to know, I guess. Anybody else I should be keeping an eye on?"

"Danneel's pretty damn good herself, when she's not banged up."

Jensen nods, not entirely surprised; it explains the incomprehensible conversations between the two of them. He eyes the way Jeff's draining his mug almost as fast as he'd filled it.

"You planning on sleeping anytime soon?" Jensen asks, arching an eyebrow. "Because as far as I can tell, you and decaf don't live in the same world."

Jeff laughs. "Used to be, I'd cut it fifty-fifty with Jameson. No real worries about getting to sleep then, just about where I'd be when I woke up."

"Or, you know, _if_ you woke up."

"Yeah, that, too," Jeff answers, falling quiet for a few seconds. "I figured it's late enough that I'd push through 'til it's light. Have a go-out before I crash. Steve can take care of stuff here until I rejoin the living."

Jensen nods and it gets quiet again. "I've been in LA for six years now," he says, looking down at the bottle in his hands. "Never much thought about the ocean or anything." He glances up and Jeff's watching him, like he's waiting to hear what Jensen says next and not like he can't figure out why the hell Jensen's talking. "Never thought much about why, not until I got here and... it's right _there_."

"People who come here," Jeff says. "Most of them ... You'd be surprised how many miss that."

"Good for me then, I guess." Jensen shakes his head. "So now that I've noticed, what do I do with it?"

"Up to you." Jeff finishes his coffee and puts the mug down on the scarred wooden table with a healthy thump. "But there's a spare board out back, and the last time I checked the off-shore buoy it's looking like almost glass this morning. Perfect day to give it a try."

There's a voice inside Jensen's head that's laughing at even the thought of trying, the low, mean snicker that's somehow become his default. Just hearing it is enough to make him nod his head and accept the invitation he's seeing in Jeff's eyes. "Yeah," he says. "I could do that."

***

Jeff drives an old Jeep--Jensen is somehow unsurprised--with some complicated arrangement that keeps the surfboards stable even with the soft-top down. He fills an even older thermos with another gallon or so of coffee and once they stop by Steve's so Jensen can change, takes off across the island. "There's this little cove, down by Kihei--sandy bottom, not too wild."

"Good," Jensen yells back over the wind.

Jeff laughs and reaches over to knock open the glove compartment. "For the cold feet," he says, handing Jensen a flask.

"Thanks," Jensen mutters. He downs a shot, which doesn't come close to taking the edge off, but he's probably a lot better off without throwing tequila into the mix. Jeff grins at him, but doesn't say anything else until he pulls over and stops on the side of the road. There's nothing but what might be a path disappearing into the trees, but Jensen climbs out and takes the surfboard and tells the stupid voice in his head to stuff it. It takes long enough to get through the trees that the voice comes back, stronger than ever, asking just what the hell Jensen thinks he's doing, what he thinks all this might accomplish, but then they're out onto a rocky little beach and he has other things to think about.

Jeff's patient and relaxed; he's maybe more into Jensen getting the hang of it than Jensen is, but that could be that layer of whatthefuckever that Jensen's let cover him. The waves are tiny, small enough that Jensen wouldn't have thought they were worth anything, but they're perfectly formed and just enough that he can get the feel of moving on the water. When he actually manages to stand up all the way in, he can't help laughing from sheer glee.

"Thanks," he says, after they've finished the coffee and are on their way back across the island. "That can't have been what you normally do--"

"No," Jeff says. "I can surf any morning, though. Been a long time since I got to convert someone."

"Yeah, well, I don't know if I'm ready for the whole crack-of-dawn thing--"

"First thing in the morning isn't the required part." Jeff smirks at him, obviously very pleased with himself.

"We'll see," Jensen says, getting out of the Jeep and reaching across to shake Jeff's hand. "Thanks. Really."

"My pleasure," Jeff says, shifting into reverse. "See you tonight."

Jensen waves and walks into the house, definitely not thinking about how he's expected somewhere.

Chris is in his usual morning fugue state, shirtless, with one hip against the bar that separates the kitchen from the front room, cargoes riding low and his eyes fixed on where the coffee's dripping slowly into the glass carafe. "Aw, fuck," he says when he sees Jensen stripping off the rashguard Jeff had tossed at him. "Not another one."

Jensen borrows a little of Jeff's self-satisfied smirk and keeps going right on through to his bedroom. He's too tired to do anything but strip and fall into bed naked, but he thinks he might still be smiling even as he's falling asleep.

***

Jensen takes the next morning off--every muscle in his body is fucking killing him--but the day after that, when he hears Steve walking around early, he steels himself and crawls out of bed into the coolish morning air. Steve's smile when he walks out of his bedroom is worth being vertical in the dim grey light.

"Jeff said you could handle Baby Beach," Steve says.

Jensen figures Jeff probably isn't trying to kill him, so he grabs a pair of flip-flops and the board Jeff wouldn't take back and follows Steve out to the van.

The waves are definitely bigger, and it's right on the other side of the bay, which means a half-dozen people are waving at them as they go by.

"Jen," Steve says. "I know Jeff said this, but it never hurts to hear it every morning. Pay attention to the water, man. You won't like how it teaches respect."

The waves are still sort of ridiculously small when Jensen thinks about it, but he makes himself ignore the potential for embarrassment and start slow, catching the first few on his knees before he even tries to stand. Steve stays back, and gives him his space; Jensen can't decide if it's because of everything they're not anymore or if it's because he's giving off some kind of _don't condescend to me_ vibe. In the end, he figures it's just Steve, letting him work shit out on his own.

It should be awkward, but by the time Jensen works up the nerve to paddle out on the other side of the shorebreak to where Steve's sitting and waiting for the real waves, there's not much left but the water and the sun, skidding in and out of the high clouds that pile up over the coastline. It's not quiet, with the wind and the waves breaking over the sand, not to mention the occasional voice calling out a greeting or laughing in satisfaction, and it's not all that isolated--the road that runs along the coast is right up at the top of the beach, and the town itself straggles out along the horizon--but there's a definite peace.

Jensen can feel it, almost touch it. He can see it written all over Steve's face. He just needs to figure out how Steve lets it in.

***

Chris blows through one afternoon while Jensen's messing around with one of the fifteen guitars they have lying around the place. Jensen makes it through a couple of chords, stuff he's heard Steve working on, before he screws up. He eyes Chris, waiting for the laughter, but Chris just picks up his own guitar.

"Like this," he says, and Jensen follows.

***

Surfing's all well and good, and it works muscles in ways not even the most sadistic trainer Jensen's ever had has dreamed of, but he still makes it out for a run a couple mornings a week. Nothing major, only around the neighborhood and down to the path along the beach if he's feeling ambitious. It's not a big place; it doesn't take long before he gets to the point that he's at least nodding to familiar faces, and occasionally even saying hi when he runs into them later in town.

Somewhere along the line, he starts sticking his head in at the hardware store. It's one of those places that has everything from frying pans to doghouses to fancy little glass knobs that hang at the end of the chains that control ceiling fans scattered in the same aisle as plumbing supplies and spackling. The house is apparently in a hell of a lot better condition than when Jeff first bought it, but there are dozens of tiny things that Jensen notices that aren't that big of a deal to fix. Steve won't let him pitch in on rent--Chris rolls his eyes at the non-discussions that ensue whenever Jensen even tries bringing the topic up--but if Jensen's quick enough, and sneaky enough, there are all kinds of things he can get done before Steve notices.

Replacing the drawer pulls and cabinet knobs in the kitchen isn't going to qualify Jensen for houseguest of the year, and the only person in the world who'd believe he'd be doing this is probably his mom, but there's a strange sort of satisfaction in getting it done. Jensen's not going to argue with that.

***

The days tend to blur together, in a good way, but still a blur, and somewhere near the end of a month, Jensen realizes he's gotten out of that LA habit of always checking his phone for messages. He's talked to his agent exactly once--she's got nothing for him, which isn't a surprise--and there really isn't anyone else he much cares about. Half the time, he's not even sure where the thing is, but when he thinks to check, there are two calls from Josh. No message so Jensen figures it's not an emergency, but he calls Josh back anyway.

"Wow," Josh says. "Look who remembered how to use his phone. Hang on a minute while I go buy a lottery ticket, see if my lucky day holds."

"There's this thing they call voicemail," Jensen answers. "The phone goes beep and if you can form words, you can let people know why you're calling."

"There's this other thing called a calendar, and if you pay attention to it, you don't do things like miss your little sister's birthday."

"Fuck," Jensen sighs, looking around for a wall to beat his head on. "Fuck, fuck, _fuck_."

"Well put, dipshit." Josh's voice isn't unkind, which Jensen actually appreciates, given that he probably did a lot of damage control upfront. "Good to know you're not dead; some of us actually work for a living, so call me back when I'm not doing that; call Mom, too. Later, bro."

The phone goes dead and Jensen stares at it for a couple of seconds before he scrolls through his contact list and finds Mackenzie's number. She's probably in class, but he can at least leave a message and start to apologize.

"I know I'm supposed to be mad at you and all," Mac says, picking up on the first ring, "but it's not like you ever remember stuff like this anyway."

"Stop letting me off the hook," Jensen says.

"I'm not, not really." Mac sounds tired, but Jensen knows better than to ask, not after the tenth _Just because I'm a girl and the baby of the family doesn't mean I'm not allowed to work for what I want_ explosion last year. "I just miss talking to you."

"Don't know why," Jensen says. "It's not like I have anything exciting to talk about most of the time."

"I like it when it's just you," Mac answers. "Nobody ever said you had to be a star before you could call home."

It sounds an awful lot like _It's okay if you're a screw-up, you can always come back and be normal_ , which Jensen knows isn't what Mac, at least, is saying, or even implying, so he makes himself leave it alone.

"That's your cue to talk, genius," Mac says. "Tell me what not-exciting things are going on in the City of Angels."

"Uh, I'm actually not there?" Jensen says. "I'm in Hawaii. Maui."

"See? That's not boring. Tell me everything."

"Not much to tell," Jensen says, settling back on his bed. "Been hanging out with Steve."

"Wait. You guys got back together and that's not excit--"

"No," Jensen says, ready to kick himself for letting that slip. "No, we're not back together. I--he's with somebody else. We're just hanging out."

Mac's quiet for a while. "Okay. I know I'm just your little sister, and that means you don't think I know anything, but... are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"I'm fine, Mac."

"Right. Like you were fine when he left and you've been fine ever since?"

"Mac," Jensen sighs.

"Jensen," Mac sighs back. "

"It's okay," Jensen says, dredging up as much conviction and sincerity as he can find. "It just… is what it is."

"Okay," Mac says, after another long pause, in that voice Jensen knows means _I don't believe you but I'll let you get away with it_. "I have to go to class now, but I'm really glad you called. Don't go so long next time."

"I won't," Jensen says. "Thanks, Mac. Happy birthday."

"And you owe me a present, don't think I'm forgetting about that. Pearls are always nice."

"Later, brat," Jensen says, and Mac hangs up giggling.

***

It really isn't that big of a house, just one main room with the kitchen separated by a bar, a bedroom cum storage room cum lanai and an actual bedroom barely big enough for a king-sized bed. The bathroom--thankfully--had been the first thing Jeff had dealt with after buying the place, but it's still an old plantation worker's house. Tiny, even by L.A. standards. The fact that it takes almost a month for Jensen to walk in on Chris and Steve is definitely due to how hard he's been working to keep from doing exactly that. It's inevitable, though, and he tells himself he's damn lucky that he happens to actually look before he pushes the screen door open.

His brain's telling him--in increasingly shrill tones--to step back before they notice him and they all end up spending the next week avoiding each other's eyes, but he can't tear himself away. It's not that he can even see that much--they're on the couch, and the back of it's blocking almost everything out--but he doesn't have to see to remember--to _know_ \--the way Steve feels moving against him, how he tastes.

Jensen loses track of how long he stands there in the door, but he finally manages to make himself step away and go find someplace else to be, even if it is only wandering in and out of the tourist traps, pretending to look for something to send Mackenzie for her birthday.


	2. Chapter 2

  
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 **\-- 2 --**

 

"Surf report says it's gonna be flat tomorrow," Steve says, on the short drive down to the cafe. Most of the time, they walk, but Steve's playing tonight. Hauling guitars and amps definitely means the van.

"Clear, too," Steve continues. "It'd be a good morning."

"For what?" Jensen asks, at the same time Chris groans. Steve smiles. "What?" Jensen repeats.

"Tourist crap," Chris says.

"Sunrise up at Haleakala," Steve corrects. "And fuck off with the tourist-crap-whining; you love it."

"Yeah, well, I _don't_ love getting up in the middle of the goddamned night to beat the buses up there. I'm guessing Hollywood back there isn't gonna be real wild about that part either."

"So we don't go to sleep." Steve pulls the van around behind the cafe. "Simple." He kills the engine and turns around to look at Jensen. "You up for it?"

"Yeah." Jensen shrugs. He _isn't_ excited about anything that has anything to do with sunrise, but Steve is, so he'll play along. "Sure."

Chris rolls his eyes, muttering under his breath about New Age, touchy-feely bullshit, but Steve smiles and elbows him out of the way. Jensen follows the two of them into Jeff's, and can't help shaking his head about how he's apparently turned into the tie-breaker.

***

Once Steve mentions the plan, Jeff tosses him the keys and the word gets out that they'll be hanging out later than usual. Sandy leaves around eleven amid wolf whistles and proposals, all dressed up because the boyfriend is taking her to some party at one of the seriously high-end hotels in Kaanapali. Dani rolls her eyes and drops catty comments about pretentious corporate types, but she sends Sandy back twice to redo her hair before granting approval on her appearance, and swears it's no problem for her to fill in for a couple of hours. Steve jams for a while and Chris picks it up when he takes a break. Jeff disappears sometime after three and Jensen ends up behind the bar, pulling beers for the five or six people who hang on until the bitter end.

It's not quite four when Steve throws the last stragglers out and locks the doors behind them. Chris lights up almost before they're out onto the street, slanting a glance at Steve and putting his feet up on the dash. "No fucking way I'm dealing with all the hippie tourist freaks without a little help." He holds the joint out.

"Later, man," Steve says, waving him off. "Don't need me trying to drive those switchbacks fucked up."

Chris shrugs and passes it back to Jensen. Jensen takes two quick hits, and then slouches down in the back seat. It's pitch black outside, nothing but the headlights of the van picking up the road ahead of them. He's a little buzzed and a little drunk and a lot relaxed. Steve laughs at him in the mirror, the easy laugh that says _I know you, I remember you, you're such a fucking lightweight_ , and Jensen's a little surprised how easy it is to take it for what it's worth and smile back.

***

Sunrise is everything Steve said it would be--and everything Chris had been muttering about, too, with the added bonus of huddling under a blanket for an hour before the night sky starts fading toward light. On the plus side, Jensen's stone-cold sober for the show, which is really goddamned spectacular, the light moving over the crater, clouds drifting far below, beautiful and other-worldly enough to make him wish for a decent camera.

On the minus side, his ass is about frozen solid, and his balls aren't far behind, and if he never hears another word about sacred spaces as interpreted by a bunch of sorority girls, he'll be the happiest guy in the world. There's a particularly excited group off to one side, and Jensen can't help rolling his eyes at the chatter.

"Careful, man," Steve says, grinning at him. "I can hear the internal snark from here; you let it build up any more and you might blow the top of your head off."

"It'd be totally wasted on this crowd," Jensen says, grinning back. "They're here for peace and light and harmony."

"Yeah, but they've got that already. Don't deny them the glory of that internal monologue I know you've got going."

"Yeah, it's in there," Jensen admits, something twisting a little in his gut when he thinks about how well Steve knows him. "But I'll spare you the details."

Steve shakes his head, but doesn't stop smiling. Chris comes up then, handing over the thermos of coffee they brought up with them. Jensen opens it gratefully; his hands are still fucking freezing.

"38 degrees in paradise, my ass," Chris grumbles. "No fucking idea why I let you drag me up here, Carlson."

"Whipped," Jensen says, once he can breathe again because, shit, the coffee tastes like it's been brewed in whiskey rather than water.

Chris eyes him, long and thoughtful. "At least I'm not snorting saltwater every goddamned morning."

"Point." Jensen knocks back another swallow and passes the thermos over, a little surprised that Chris hadn't added that he was getting laid for his trouble.

Jensen thinks about it all the way back down the mountain, ninety minutes' worth of twisty roads and little towns that pop up out of nowhere, and takes it with him when he staggers into his room and drops onto the cool sheets.

***

The vibe in the cafe that night is laid back, mostly locals, friends. Jensen can feel a thrum of anticipation--expectation--as Steve and Chris start fiddling with guitars and amps, unlike other nights when there are more tourists.

"We started off this morning at Haleakala," Steve says, grinning at the reaction from the crowd, hoots and catcalls and cheers. "Didn't _completely_ freeze our asses off, so we're gonna finish it here with you, and I gotta tell you," he glances over at Chris and his smile shifts, becomes more personal, "that's just about the definition of a perfect day in my book."

Jensen watches from his usual spot, and it's all right there in front of him. Chris and Steve are tight and solid, and Jensen isn't gonna be that guy, the one who fucks with things just because he can. Not this time.

"Hey, gorgeous." Danneel drops into a chair and puts her feet up on another. Under the long sarong she's got wrapped around her waist as a skirt, her legs are scratched all to hell and back and even her freckles are looking wan and washed out.

"Hey yourself," Jensen answers, sliding his beer across the table and catching Jeff's eye for a refill. "Rough day?"

"I'm getting the shit kicked out of me this week." She puts her head down on the table. "Got caught up in a rip and dragged over the reef. Tore the fucking sail, too, and oh, my God, you do not want to know how much one of those things costs."

"Maybe you could take a break," Jensen starts, but Danneel sighs and Jeff, bringing over his beer, is shaking his head.

"Grand prix is here in a month," Danneel says. "And I haven't done jack this year--I don't do halfway decent, I'll lose the two damn sponsors I have left and be back here full-time." Jeff lays down the fresh beer and Danneel smiles up at him. "Not that I don't love you, Jeff."

Jeff taps her gently on the top of her head. "Quit forcing it out there. You can fly on those winds and you know it, but not when you're trying to make it happen."

"Yeah," Danneel sighs. "I know--no, really, Jeff, I know--it's just… hard." Jeff snorts and she smiles, a real one this time, and waves her hand, shooing him away. "Yeah, I know you know. Okay, go on and go. Take care of your place."

She drains the beer with practiced ease and Jensen can't resist playing with her a little, clutching the refill Jeff had brought him with exaggerated horror, but before she can do much beyond smacking at him, Steve calls over to him.

"Hey, Jen," Steve says. "This one would sound better with a little extra harmony--you up for it?"

Steve's voice is casual, cool, the same as how he'd intro'd the set and maybe it really is that easy to him. Jensen should be at least thinking about this--he hasn't sung in longer than he can remember, and that's even before you add in Chris and all that singing with _him_ entails--but he's pushing back from the table and rolling his eyes at Danneel's _go, Gorgeous, go_.

Steve's smile slides into the one Jensen remembers, the one that feels like home. Chris shifts over with zero complaint and it's really not that hard at all.

***

Danneel grins at Jensen as he comes off stage, dropping her feet to the floor and sliding the chair she's saved for him over.

"Oh, sweetheart," she says, handing him her beer. "I sure as hell hope you can run in those cute Hollywood flip-flops, because I don't think the piranhas in this town are going to care which team you're batting for."

Jensen shakes his head at her, but takes care not to make eye contact with anyone. "It was three songs, Danneel. Harmony. You know, where I'm the guy standing in the back."

"Steve and Chris are all wrapped up in each other." Danneel shrugs. Jensen keeps his face as blank as possible; she isn't saying anything he doesn't already know, even if it does suck to hear it out loud. "Even the ones who stay stoned all the time have figured that one out. But you're new. It's a small town. You're driving them crazy."

"Peachy," Jensen says, standing up to go get another beer. "You want another one?"

"Oh, hell yes," she says. "But I'm officially trying not to flame out this season, so I've hit my limit for the night."

Jensen tells himself to remember that; anybody who's working her ass off the way Danneel seems to be doesn't need to be sabotaged by her friends. Jeff hands him a beer and some kind of a protein shake. Danneel snorts when Jensen hands it to her, flipping Jeff off over her head without even turning around, but she drinks it obediently, and later, Jensen sees her stop to give Jeff a hug on her way out.

Jared wanders in for a little while, long enough to grab a beer and say hi, but ducks back out again with a girl Jensen doesn't recognize, other than that she doesn't quite fit with the rest of the crowd. He catches Jeff watching them leave with a long, thoughtful look; if Danneel had still been around, Jensen doesn't doubt he'd be getting an earful on the whole pick-up, but as it is, he files it away for later.

It's an early night--it usually is when it's mostly locals--so it's not all that much past one when Jensen gives Steve and Chris a hand breaking everything down and getting it back in the van. He's not quite ready to call it a night, though; he tells them to go on without him.

"You okay?" Steve asks.

"Yeah, man, fine. A little wired, that's all."

"Alright," Steve says, after exchanging a look with Chris that Jensen isn't even gonna try to figure out. "Later."

Jensen thinks about walking down to the edge of the bay--the moon's almost full, the view is probably awesome--but ends up going right back inside.

"You want something else?" Jeff asks, and Jensen realizes he's the only person left.

"Oh, hey, no. I'm just wired tonight, didn't want to go stare at the ceiling." It's more that he didn't want go watch Steve finish off the day with Chris, but that's not something he's going to say out loud. "I can hang out down on the beach or whatever."

"No problem," Jeff says, sorting through the bottles behind the bar. "Here," he says, pulling out a tall, slender one. "Rum. Kimo makes this from the sugar cane they grow up Haleakala."

"Yeah, okay." Jensen rolls his eyes. "It's definitely a theme. I can work with that." The rum's smooth and golden and rich on Jensen's tongue, washing away the last bitter aftertaste of the beer he'd been drinking. Jeff pours himself one, too; Jensen finds himself watching how the pale amber catches the light. When he looks up, Jeff's eyes are on him, curious and maybe a little speculative, and he smiles when Jensen doesn't break the contact.

"Steve doesn't say much," Jeff begins, and Jensen can't help snorting at that, because, no, Steve doesn't ever say much about anything. Jeff grins. "Yeah, no shock there. I just meant... I don't know what's going on, but Steve talked about you, some. When he first got here, before he was set on sticking around. There wasn't much else he missed about LA."

Jensen nods, but doesn't trusts himself to speak. He knocks back what's left in his glass, and it's way too good to be treated like that, but it's better than throwing it against the wall.

"Steve and Chris--they do their own thing, but they're solid, for all that it's not the white picket fence." Jeff pours a little more into Jensen's glass. "You don't seem the type to ignore that--"

"Oh, I am," Jensen says. His voice is sticking somewhere in his throat and it's coming out hoarse and soft, but he meets Jeff's eyes again. "Or I was--I've been known to..." He tells himself to shut up, but his mouth doesn't quite seem to be getting the message. "I'm not doing it this time, but let's be really clear about prior convictions, okay?"

"Well," Jeff says, his voice equally soft. "Seems to me there should be a little positive reinforcement going on then."

Jensen looks up and Jeff's eyes are dark and intense, but clear and focused on Jensen, nothing in them but appreciation and maybe the beginning of a smile.

"That an offer?"

"Hell yeah."

Jensen doesn't need to think about it much--or at all, really. He slides off the bar stool, brings his glass with him and takes the bottle from Jeff while he flips the deadbolts on the front door and turns out the lights. The kitchen's quiet and already dark and it's not more than ten steps out the back across to the small stucco house that sits on the corner of the property.

There's not much to Jeff's place, other than a solid wall of glass that faces the bay. Jensen has the feeling that Jeff doesn't need much more. Besides, they're not there for the house and garden tour. Jensen wanders over to watch the moon catch the crest of a wave, out past the breakers. Jeff comes up behind him, quiet and still, and it's been a long time since Jensen's let things play out at their own pace but Jeff seems to be on the same page. When Jensen finally turns his head and lets Jeff's mouth find his, the rum tastes spicy and rich on him, deeper, more complex than what Jensen just tasted in his own glass. Jeff's skin is smooth and warm under Jensen's hand, his back strong and arms open and easy.

He thought it would keep on with the same slow intensity--there's no rush, they've got all night--but when Jeff breaks the first kiss, Jensen catches his face in both hands, pulling him right back in for another, and slow can go fuck itself. Jeff gets him up against the wall and works a thigh hard between his legs. Jensen moves into him; a practiced roll of his hips that has Jeff growling into the kiss even as he's pulling back.

"Good?" Jensen smirks, then groans as Jeff scrubs the heel of his hand down over Jensen's dick.

"Too smooth, and you know it," Jeff breathes. "Want to hear what you sound like when that gloss you wear like armor's gone and you're begging for my dick." He slides his hands up under the t-shirt Jensen's wearing and breaks the kiss long enough to get it over his head and off.

"Yeah," Jensen mutters, laying his head back against the wall, daring Jeff to mark his throat. He hisses as Jeff takes the opening and bites, quick and sharp, along his collarbone. This time when he moves, it's a little rougher, a little less rehearsed, and Jeff smiles into his skin.

***

The bed's a wreck when they're finished, pillows scattered across the room, quilt and sheets stripped off onto the floor. Jeff rolls off the bed and stumbles a little on his way to the bathroom; Jensen's not so fucked-out that he can't smile with a certain well-earned sense of gratification and, okay, smugness, even if he doesn't really feel like moving himself. Now that his blood's stopped pounding, he can hear the ocean through the open windows and doors, different than the night noises at Steve's, quiet and hypnotic. He's half-asleep when Jeff comes back, startles awake at the wash cloth Jeff drops on his thigh.

"Thanks," Jensen mumbles. "Clear outta here in a sec..."

"Easier to stay," Jeff answers, words almost obliterated by the yawn that overtakes him. He yanks a sheet up off the floor and throws it half over Jensen as he flops down on the mattress.

It's not; Jensen knows the better option is almost always to fuck and go, but something in his subconscious takes Jeff at face value and he's asleep before he takes two breaths.

***

He wakes up to a slap on the ass and Jeff laughing in his ear, "Out of bed, pretty boy."

Jensen manages to flip Jeff off and simultaneously pull the quilt over his head. "Go catch your wave, man, I'm fine right here," he mumbles.

"Flatter than flat today, junior," Jeff answers, the tips of his fingers running light and teasing over the fading sting of the slap. "Calls for a road trip. Hana."

"Later?" Jensen groans and he's not sure how much of the groan comes from being awake in the dark and how much comes from how Jeff's thumb is rubbing circles into the top of his thigh.

"Need to be rolling by seven," Jeff says. "It's the journey, not the destination and all that deep, philosophical shit, but it's tourist season so haul that fine ass out of bed so we can let them eat our exhaust."

"Fuck, it's 5:30. In the morning. It doesn't take me an hour to shower."

Jeff leans into Jensen, hard muscle pinning him to the bed, and pulls the pillow off his head. "Depends on how long I feel like fucking you first."

He's still a little sore from the night before and Jeff doesn't bother with much prep, just pushes Jensen's thighs apart with his own and eases inside, a long slow push that leaves Jensen digging his hands into the mattress.

"Shit, Jeff," he hisses when Jeff stills deep inside him. "C'mon, quit teasing; move, dammit."

"Greedy," Jeff laughs, pulling out fast enough to make Jensen's growl catch in his throat. "You'll get yours, don't worry." He slaps Jensen again, two quick smacks that barely have time to register before he's fucking back into Jensen, the hard burn of being filled overlaid with the sharp sting of the slaps. Jensen pushes back, gets his knees under him and lets Jeff use him however he wants, wraps his hand around his own cock and jerks himself off. If he has to be awake at dawn, it's not a bad way to go.

***

Jeff makes fucking _awesome_ coffee. It's the only thing that's keeping Jensen from strangling him and turning the Jeep around to head back toward Paia and the bed Jeff had dragged him ruthlessly out of.

He clutches the travel mug protectively and tries to brace himself against the non-stop twists and turns Jeff's flying through.

"Tell me why I care about this again," Jensen shouts, over the rush of the wind and the growl of the Jeep.

"Road to _Hana_ , dude." Jeff takes his eyes off the road to roll them at Jensen; Jensen closes his own so he doesn't have to see how he's going to die when Jeff runs them off the road. "Wailua Falls? The Seven Sacred Pools?" Jensen opens his eyes and shakes his head, but then the road curves down into the rainforest and Jeff slows enough that Jensen can stop visualizing his death and really pay attention to the lush green that's surrounding them. "Any time you want to stop, hike up to a waterfall or something, lemme know."

The voice in the back of Jensen's head, the one that belongs to his inner bitch and still isn't happy about, well, any of this, sneers that it's a bunch of trees, whoopee-shit. The rest of him is feeling like breathing deep and letting Jeff's voice wash over him isn't such a bad idea at all.

***

Thankfully, there really is a Hana at the end of the road. Or, well, not really at the end of the road, because it keeps going, but at least the two hundred or so switchbacks Jeff's just rocketed through are there for some reason, not just because somebody thought it would be fun to cut a road through a rainforest and see how many times they could make somebody puke on the way. The road smoothes out and stops twisting; Jeff drives past a school and the police department and a firehouse, everything a town might need, perched right there on the edge of the island, and pulls in past the gas pumps to park at the general store. Jensen follows him out of the Jeep, stretching out the kinks before climbing up the wide stairs and into the store, sidestepping stacks of merchandise--baby food and CDs and chips and surfing stuff, all jumbled together with cases of canned fruit and bottled water and Spam and bags of fresh-ground coffee.

Jeff doesn't get two steps into the place before the guy behind the counter starts laughing. "Morgan! I should have known you'd be the one they suckered into this run. The kids are around somewhere; been hanging around, getting in the way all morning." He turns around and picks up a phone, hesitating a little before he thumbs it on. "You going straight back or you got plans before you leave." His eyes, when they sweep over Jensen are curious, but not unfriendly. "You got plenty of time; the kids don't need to be in Haiku before tonight."

"Gimme a couple of hours then," Jeff says. "It'd be a shame to have gotten him," he nods at Jensen, "all the way out here and skip out on the full experience."

Jensen snorts. "If you mean seeing how many more times you can make me think you're trying to off me, why don't we just save it for the trip back."

The other guy grins. "Nah, we got more here than twisty roads."

Jensen would roll his eyes, but it'd be rude, considering the guy lives here and all, so he settles for arching an eyebrow and smirking at Jeff.

"I'll pass the word on for the kids to be here around one, if that works for you."

"Yeah, that'll get us back down-island before dark," Jeff says, and Jensen is a little bemused at how wandering back into the bar last night turned into a quick fuck is turning into full-scale spending actual time together. He hasn't done anything even close to that since, well, since Steve left. He's more surprised at how he's okay with it.

Jeff starts piling shit onto the counter--water and fruit and sandwiches from a cooler--as though they don't already have stuff in the Jeep. When Jensen cocks an eyebrow at him, he shrugs. "No sense wasting time inside."

"Sure," Jensen agrees. He drops some candy on the counter and pulls his wallet out, paying for everything and not letting Jeff elbow him out of the way. Jeff's muttering under his breath, but Jensen ignores him.

"Lead on, man. Let's go have the full experience."

Jeff really doesn't like it when people don't do what he wants--Jensen's no end of amused by how torqued Jeff is that Jensen paid for a pile of crap that he himself is going to be consuming. He doesn't even bother not grinning outright as they dump everything in the Jeep.

"Beach or something else?" Jeff finally gets over himself enough to ask.

"You tell me," Jensen says, easily. "I mean, there's a beach right outside your house, but if this one's all that much better..."

"Maybe," Jeff says, relaxing a tiny bit. "Later, okay?"

"Fine by me." Jensen leans back and gets comfortable, or as comfortable as he can get in the damn Jeep. Jeff manages to drive like a normal person, not the maniac Jensen knows him to be, which Jensen takes as a sign that he likes the people in the town. Either that or the local cops know him. The road keeps them right along the coast, more of the Pacific reminding Jensen how far he's come from Richardson and, hell, from LA, for that matter. Jeff pulls off after a bit, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and Jensen should have known that the "full experience" was going to include a forced march up what looks like a goddamned ravine.

Jeff's smirk tells Jensen that Jeff knows exactly how hard Jensen's biting his tongue, but whatever, he's not going to back down now. Jeff sets an easy pace, but Jensen doesn't get the feeling that it's to humor him, more that Jeff's in the mood for it. The path follows a stream that widens into a pool fed by a waterfall, and then another, and another, and another. After the fourth or fifth, Jeff stops and eases the pack off his shoulders.

"We're about halfway up," he says. "Figured this was as good a place as any."

Jensen looks at the ridiculously gorgeous pool, sun-dappled and still, and the equally photogenic waterfall, and laughs. "Romantic picnic?" He manages to get one hand up to snag the backpack when Jeff slings it at him, tsking at the potential waste of food. He isn't sure what time it is--his watch is back on the floor next to Jeff's bed--but the sun is edging high behind the blowing clouds and he's starving. It's not really all that private; there's a steady stream of hikers passing by, but it's quiet enough that it's not a problem to find a curve of rock to sit on and eat while the waterfall crashes nearby.

Jensen leans back, propping himself up on his elbows and has to laugh again. "So not my normal deal," he says, when Jeff cocks an eyebrow at him.

"'s Maui," Jeff says, as though that's supposed to mean something. "Surfing wasn't your deal either, yeah?"

"I don't even fucking know anymore," Jensen says, and he doesn't mean for it to come out the way it does, sharp and frustrated.

"Why are you here?" Jeff asks, after a bit. "On the island, not just here with me."

"Ran away from home," Jensen answers, after a long couple of seconds. "Left a couple hundred bucks in an envelope for my roommate and ran for Steve. Didn't that work out well."

"You're still here."

"Nothing much to go back to."

"Job?"

"Auditions for stuff I couldn't give a shit about." The water in the bottle's a little warm, but it eases the tightness in Jensen's throat.

"Family?"

"Still in Texas, and man, I love them, but...That's not really a place I want to be. Can be." Jensen swallows down another mouthful of tepid water before he adds, "I have a return ticket, but I don't think I thought I'd be using it. Except I didn't think about a lot of things, apparently."

"There are worse places than here to be figuring out if you need a break or a _break_ ," Jeff says, quietly.

"Yeah," Jensen answers, leaning back on his elbows and focusing on the water spilling over the stones and crashing into the pool. "That's the big question, isn't it?"

Jeff laughs, nothing much more than a quick exhalation, but doesn't answer otherwise. Jensen closes his eyes and listens to the water for a while, letting the quiet and the peace sink into him. "Why are we here?" He opens his eyes and pokes at Jeff, half-asleep next to him, with one foot. "Here, at the end of the island--and seriously, don't give me another round of the journey-is-the-destination crap."

He might be imagining things, but he's pretty sure Jeff's turning a little red under the tan.

"A lot of the kids down here--the ones without the millionaire parents--it's pretty hard for them to make it to anything that's down-island. No cars, or no one to take them… If I have the time, I'll come up and run them over to Haiku, so they can be ready to go in the morning. Or I get them after the competition and bring them back. Whichever way they need it. It's kinda loose, but it works."

"So what you're telling me is that you fucking dragged me out of bed for a babysitting run?"

"Figured they could give you some pointers on how not to drown when you get off Baby Beach and out to Ho'okipa." Jeff's smirk is back in full force.

"Christ, all right, I get it; I'm paying attention when I'm out there." Jensen rolls his eyes.

"Can't say it too many times." The smirk's gone and Jeff's eyes are serious. "Small town, remember? We hate getting used to having someone around and then losing them."

"You say the sweetest things," Jensen says, keeping it light, but he can't remember the last time anyone beside Steve's given a flying fuck whether he's around or not.

***

The kids are waiting for them on the porch of the general store, their wetsuits and surfing paraphernalia spilling out of cheap, nylon ripstop bags. Jeff waves them down to the Jeep while he and Jensen head inside to use an actual bathroom. Jeff, of course, gets sidetracked on the way back out, which leaves Jensen to face them down alone.

"Where do you surf out of?" the girl asks, joining her brother in giving Jensen the once-over with the special intensity of teenagers assessing anything outside their tribe.

"How do you know I surf?" Jensen might be the outsider, but he knows how to counter that status. Besides, Christ, they're just kids.

"You know Jeff," the boy says.

"Yeah?" When Jensen shrugs, the kids eye him curiously. "I must be one of his other friends, then."

They look at him like he's from another planet, and the girl says, "You hang out with Jeff Morgan but you don't _surf_?"

"I guess once or twice doesn't count, huh?" Jensen grins at their horror, and then has to ask, "Why?"

"Cause, that's like, what he _does_." The boy leans forward, forgetting that he' s supposed to be cool. "He was on the WCT, dude. Hard-core, until he blew his knee out on a wave. My uncle saw him almost win the Eddie."

Jensen blinks a couple of times, trying to make the words make some kind of sense, but finally says, "I grew up in Texas. We didn't really pay much attention to surfing." He leaves them to their shock and dismay, and heads back inside. Jeff's finishing up his gossip session with the guys who run the store, so Jensen grabs another bottle of water and pokes through the snacks.

"Sorry, man," Jensen says, when Jeff finishes with the news and comes up behind him. "I think I just tanked your street cred with the junior set." Jeff arches an eyebrow at him. "Not only do I not surf any place that actually counts--which is an offense punishable by death, from the look in their eyes--I have no idea who Eddie is."

The guys behind the counter laugh. "It's not a who, it's a what--big invitational, over on Oahu. North Shore, big waves. Bigger money. Hellman rights for-fucking-ever."

"Yeah?" Jensen slants a look at Jeff, who's gotten more quiet than Jensen's ever seen him. "Imagine that. And the WCT?"

"World Cup," they chorus, the younger-looking one continuing, "Glam circuit. _Sports Illustrated_ covers and all that. Holy grail for kids like that."

"It was a long time ago," Jeff says, and Jensen's never seen him force a smile the way he's doing. "Another life." He drops some cash on the counter and starts edging toward the door. "Catch you guys on the next trip."

Jensen catches up right as Jeff gets outside. "Well, isn't that interesting."

"Not a big deal," Jeff says. Jensen's seen better acting in a suburban Texas dinner theater, but he figures now probably isn't the time to mention it.

"Sure," Jensen says, after a second. He nods toward the Jeep. "You better go start damage control. Sorry?"

"I'm sure I can think of a way for you to make it up to me." It's still not Jeff's usual easy delivery, but it's closer.

"Hell, yeah," Jensen snorts. "And, hey, if I wasn't saddled with a couple of kids, I'd be getting right on that on the way back." Jeff flips him off, and Jensen grins. "Nah, none of that either. Impressionable minors, remember?"

The kids are draped over the back seat of the Jeep, dark and tan and looking like they fit a hell of a lot better than Jensen feels like he does.

Jeff looks back at the kids and grins as he and Jensen get in the front. "Which way should we go? Back down the way we came or over Piilani?"

"In this?" The boy thumps his hand down on the back of Jensen's seat. "Piilani! Awesome!"

Jeff throws his head back and laughs, full and deep. "Thought so," he says. "Buckle up." Jensen thinks he probably should be worried at how quickly the kids do just that, but he has to grab for the dashboard to balance himself as Jeff goes tearing out of the parking lot, the kids whooping and screaming the whole way.

***

Piilani turns out to be somewhat less nausea-inducing than the trip out on Hana Highway, but it definitely has its moments, especially with Jeff behind the wheel. It's shorter, though, spilling out onto an actual normal road somewhere in the middle of the island. That, of course, means Jeff can drive faster, but at least Jensen's not looking over the edge of a cliff at the same time. Jeff's plan--communicated at the top of his lungs so Jensen can hear him over the wind and the Jeep's engine, because God forbid they actually stop and be able to speak--is to drop the kids at their coach's house, where they're spending the night, and then get on back to Paia.

It kind of goes without saying that Jeff goes way back with the coach, so there's no real way to turn down the invitation to dinner. Jensen half-expects to be bored out of his mind with more gossip about people he doesn't know, but it turns out that Alex, the coach, who's more like a camp counselor than any coach Jensen's ever seen, pays the bills by working alongside his father and brothers in their construction company. Once the kids get settled in the big, open-plan living room with the rest of the kids who're spending the night, he and Jeff start sketching out some work Jeff wants to have done at the café. It's nothing major, nothing that'll change the vibe of the place, but stuff that'll open the room up a little more, give Jeff enough space for a few more tables.

Jensen isn't sure what's weirder: being included in the give-and-take of the brainstorming, like he's a part of it all; or being interested in the discussion to begin with.

Steve's van is already parked behind the cafe when Jeff finally pulls in; Jensen has a couple of seconds to make sure he's got his game face on before they walk in through the back door. He doesn't really have a fucking clue what's going on, or what he's supposed to do about it. Except for the times where he's had Jeff's dick down his throat or up his ass, the two of them have been pretty much like normal.

Steve's under the bar, cursing steadily at the beer tap; Chris is in the far corner with his guitar and a couple of notebooks. Jeff hangs over the bar and starts offering advice, backseat driving until Steve rolls to his feet. "All yours, man," he says, and if it'd been anybody but Steve, Jensen figures the wrench in his hand would have gone right at Jeff's head. As it is, Steve drops it on the bar with a little more force than necessary. Jeff laughs, but tosses Steve a bottle from the cooler before he ducks down and starts working on the tap himself.

Steve drinks half the bottle in one long swallow, head tipped back and the long line of his throat clean and pure, like Jensen remembers, and when he finishes up and looks at Jensen, it's clear and direct, no BS, no crap. Jensen's almost a little ashamed that he'd thought he'd need to pretend.

"It being Jeff, the message was pretty bare-bones, but… Hana?" Steve says, smiling when Jensen rolls his eyes, but following along when he heads out the front door. Jeff's doing his share of cursing now, and Chris is still heads-down in whatever song he's working out, and that's more than fine with Jensen. He doesn't particularly want an audience for this.

"Yeah, the journey's the destination. All that crap and a baby-sitting run, too." Jensen steals the beer out of Steve's hand and finishes it himself. "Why? Is that the standard operating procedure for new fucks?"

Steve laughs. "Way the hell on the other side of standard, as far as I know." He eyes Jensen curiously. "Don't think I've ever seen him go home with somebody from here. Maybe once or twice from Lahaina or Kaanapali, but nobody local."

"Yeah, well, I'm not exactly local, now am I?"

"Close enough," Steve says, smiling. "Close enough."

***

Steve's taken to waiting for Jensen before he heads out in the morning; most days, Jensen goes with him. That first morning aside, Jensen figures trying to surf with Jeff is a one-way ticket to traction and physical therapy. He can't really keep up with Steve either, but he can usually find a break or two not far off from wherever Steve settles in that works for him. What's really fucking weird is that he's gone out once or twice on his own, too--he tells himself there's not all that much to do and it's easy enough to walk down to the beach from town.

Chris rolls his eyes every time he sees Jensen propping the board up against the back of the house, but after the second or third time, Jensen notices that the coffee's always fresh-brewed, even on the mornings when it's only him coming back to the house.

***

The big news in town is that the local crunchy, indie bookstore's doing well enough that it can expand into and take over the cafe next to it. Jensen doesn't think the place was ever much competition to Jeff, but he catches a flicker of something in Jeff's eyes when the deal's done and it's clear they're at a completely different crowd, still locals, but people who can stop during the day, linger over lunch, but not cut into the dinner and night-time crowd. It's like Jeff's relieved he can be happy for someone and not be dicking himself over at the same time. Jensen still gets his coffee at Jeff's, because Jeff's addicted to Kona and there's never a question about what's brewing there, but he finds himself wandering around the shelves at the other place more often than not.

They don't care if he stays for hours, but he tries to buy something, even if it's small, just to throw some business their way. Besides, he kind of likes the place. There's no telling what he'll find on the shelves, and new stuff shows up on some kind of schedule that makes sense only to the owners. He finds a book on shiatsu stuck in randomly with the DIY stuff and is paging through it when he hears his name being called.

"Hey," Sandy says. "I didn't know you were into massage."

Jensen shrugs. "I always told my folks that if the acting didn't work out, I was gonna do physical therapy." Jensen thinks it might be time to admit that the acting pretty much hasn't worked out, but that's honestly not why he picked up the book.

"Oh." Sandy's voice falls a little. "I just, I have some friends, who've started this incredible spa and clean house, you know, no chemical processing, so it's safe for people who have systemic allergies, who are poisoned by how everything, fabric and carpet and, and even the wood for the floor is treated with toxic chemicals... anyway, I do food for them sometimes, and I know they're looking for a massage therapist, so I thought, you know, synergy, like maybe you were looking for something and it would all flow together..."

"I'm not exactly certified," Jensen says. Or even vaguely qualified, he thinks.

"That's okay," Sandy laughs. "They're kind of under the radar themselves, so they wouldn't mind."

Jensen puts the book back on the shelf and walks out with Sandy. "How do you manage?" he says, his mouth running way in front of his brain. "Living around here, I mean. I didn't think much was worse than LA, and unless everyone's forgotten to mention something about you, I can't quite figure out..." he asks, more surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth than Sandy looks to be hearing them. "I'm sorry, that was rude--"

"No, it's okay," she says, smiling. "Sometimes, I'm not sure myself. Jeff pays fair, and the tips are good there, enough that I can share a place and pay my part. It's small and nothing fancy, but I've lived in some scary places before, the kind where you wake up and wonder if paradise is worth it." She rolls her eyes. "Don't tell Jared I said that, okay? He wants to take care of the world, even before he had the money to do it, but I'm not real big on taking things from friends. It's pretty much the only thing we fight about."

"Yeah, sure," Jensen says.

"What I said before, about synergy? It really does work." She's so earnest, Jensen bites his tongue to keep from laughing. "When you're open to the possibilities in life, it's amazing how many times things just fall into place." She eyes him through narrowed eyes, so maybe he needs to work on his poker face. "I know, it sounds stupid and naive, but I'm _here_ , working for a guy who's not only not a sleaze, but who never blinked when I started catering on the side. I don't make much at that, not yet, anyway, but it sure as hell beats where most of the girls I knew when I first got here are now."

"I'm glad everything's working out for you," Jensen says, honestly.

"It will for you, too," she says, leaning up to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Just thinking about it--it gets things started. You'll see." She starts off down the street and then turns back to add, "And my friends, with the spa, they're for real; it's not code for turning tricks, okay?" For a second, Sandy looks as old as Jeff, as old as Jensen feels some days.

"What?" Jensen grins, deliberately lightening the mood, because, yeah, he's been there, too. "I'm not pretty enough?"

***

Out on the water, Jensen falls all the time--he's lucky if he gets two or three clean rides a morning--but the first time he really buys it, cuts it too fine on a wave that's too big for him to handle in the first place, he finally gets why Steve and Jeff have been nagging at him. In the end, it's nothing more than getting slammed down into the sandy reef hard enough that half the skin on his right side is scraped away and then catching the next wave full in the face when he breaks the surface, so that he goes right back down, but it's enough to have the adrenaline screaming through his veins.

The second time, he comes up far enough inside that he doesn't have all hell breaking on top of him, and hauls his board back by the leash. His knee twinges a little as he treads water and the salt stings like hell in all the scratches, but everything still works and somehow he hasn't even lost a contact. He catches sight of Steve, already up on shore and lets himself drift in. Steve comes out in the shallows to give him a hand when it's clear his knee would much rather not take his weight for at least a couple more minutes.

"Well, that was fun," Jensen says, dropping down onto the sand, still panting a little. Steve laughs, but it sounds shaky and Jensen looks up in surprise. "C'mon, man, it wasn't that bad."

"Did I forget to mention the part where you're supposed to stay on _top_ of the water?" Steve says, digging out a bottle of water and handing it over. "Idiot."

"No kidding, really?" Jensen answers, rinsing some of the salt and grit out of his mouth. "I'll keep that in mind tomorrow."

"Oh, your ribs are gonna love getting out past the breakers again." Steve presses gently, looking for breaks or cracks. Jensen hisses at the pressure on the scrapes, and really could live without getting poked on what's likely to be some spectacular bruising, but nothing else turns up. "You might want to give it a rest tomorrow," Steve says.

"Aw, honey, I didn't know you cared," Jensen cracks, and then wants to kick himself. He could use the excuse that he's just been scraped along the bottom of the Pacific and is still a little loopy, but the God's honest truth is he hadn't thought before the words came flying out. He's almost afraid to look at Steve--doesn't actually, for a few seconds--but when he finally drags his eyes off the sand, Steve's looking at him steadily, waiting for him.

"Always," Steve says, sitting back on his heels. "Always."

"Yeah," Jensen answers, and he's able somehow to let go of that last stubborn bitterness that kept the 'just' in front of 'friends.' Steve sees it, Jensen thinks, which doesn't surprise him, but he _is_ grateful for it.

"C'mon," Steve says, standing up and hauling Jensen to his feet, too. "You're done for the day, and I'm not in the mood to fight the windsurfing crowd for drop-ins."

Jensen's knee protests and the adrenaline is finally gone, which makes the hike back up to Steve's van really not much fun--but for his first near-death experience, it's not all that bad.

***

Jensen has no idea how Danneel figures things out--he and Jeff are both all for keeping things low-key--but it only takes about a week before she wanders over while she's waiting for her next order, a knowing, _evil_ grin out in full force.

"Do us a favor and let the piranhas know you're off the market," she says, perching on the extra chair at the table and stealing Jensen's beer. "It gets old, fast, listening to them churn and burn."

"How about I just give you PR rights to the story and let you take care of things?"

"Brave boy," Danneel says, laughing. "You sure there aren't any details you'd like to share, so I don't misrepresent you?"

"I'm sure it'll be much more entertaining if I give you full rein." Jensen grins at her.

"You know it, gorgeous." She finishes with his beer and hands him the half-empty bottle. "Doesn't mean the first-person account would go unappreciated..."

"Down, girl," Jensen says. "And why the hell is it that you work in a bar but you always end up with my beer?"

"Because it's not that wheat and blackberry swill Jeff keeps around for Jared. Plus, I like watching you get all hot and bothered about it." Danneel grins, jumping up from the chair as Jeff calls her with her order. "On my way, stud," she answers him, only loud enough to be heard by half the bar.

Jensen's in the middle of a swallow; he's lucky he doesn't choke to death, especially when he gets a look at the pained expression on Jeff's face.

"I guess we're lucky she's mostly living out on the water," Jensen says to Sandy, when she brings him another beer to replace the one Danneel drank.

"It had to get out sometime," Sandy says, looking at him thoughtfully, not playing along at all. He wants to ask what's up, because he's never seen her stand on ceremony with Jeff before, but the moment passes and she doesn't treat him any differently, so Jensen lets it slide.

Steve's cool with the whole thing; Chris, obviously, doesn't have much to complain about--it's all so easy, Jensen almost doesn't trust it.

He doesn't say that out loud, of course. He just goes with the flow, which is, he's coming to realize, what he always does. At least this flow is a good one. He's getting fucked on an almost nightly basis by somebody who isn't out to screw him over in the rest of his life even if nobody's kidding themselves that they're not treating as anything more than a good, old-fashioned buddyfuck.

***

The afternoons when Jensen's too lazy even to walk up to town, he ends up more often than not hanging out around the house with Chris. They have an unspoken agreement not to actually talk about the fact that they're spending time together, because any way Jensen spins it, it remains fucking _weird_ and he doesn't think Chris sees it any differently. They generally stick to music, because even if Jensen grew up singing in church and Chris was more the type to be talking his way into bars before he was old enough to vote, there's still enough common ground that they almost lose the awkward silences that have been such a special part of their relationship.

Chris has an acoustic guitar that fits Jensen's voice like it was made for him; it's been a long time since Jensen's paid attention to music like that guitar makes him want to. There are days they don't stop until Jensen's fingers are bleeding, and even then his voice can hold out longer.

There's a song Chris keeps coming back to, one he says he and Steve started early on but can't quite find the right path for it to take. Jensen keeps quiet while Chris pokes at it; he'd started to leave once, but Chris had muttered something about working better with somebody else in the room and Jensen had been startled enough to stay. Now he just kicks back on the couch and lets the buzz of an afternoon of beer and a little weed float him along.

Chris gives up again and starts playing randomly, like that first day, and Jensen hears himself say, "You knew who I was."

"Come again?"

"When I showed up here." Jensen tells himself he really needs to stop smoking up with Chris. He's vaguely curious, granted, but there's no way in hell he'd have brought the subject up without being under the influence. He'd blow it off, but Chris has that look that says he's not letting it go, even if it's only because he knows Jensen would rather not have opened his mouth. "You knew who I was as soon as you saw me."

"Wasn't really anybody else you could be," Chris says, shrugging. "How many people you think Steve lets in, anyway? And once you're in, you're in. You should know that."

Jensen does; he's just not exactly sure what it means.

***

Steve kicks Jeff out from behind the bar once or twice a week, usually with a "Oh, for fuck's sake, Morgan, _go_ , it's what you pay me for." Most of those nights, Jeff will arch an eyebrow at Jensen and they'll end up making the rounds in Lahaina or Kaanapali.

Jeff's mostly checking out the competition and he's not kidding either one of them, but it's not like it's a chore for Jensen to spend time with the guy and they always do get around to fucking. The fact that on those nights it's usually fast and hard against a wall in an alley isn't a big negative either.

Ending up in the Jeep heading the wrong way down Hana Highway, away from Lahaina and Kaanapali, is kind of a surprise, but before Jensen is convinced that Jeff has a death wish and is exercising it on driving out to Hana at night, Jeff's turning off on the ocean side and snaking his way through open, rolling fields, wild mangoes and avocados spaced between other, more manicured plantings. The houses Jensen can see are the kind that come with the word "estate" attached to them, and the closer the Jeep gets to the ocean, the bigger they get. The driveway Jeff finally turns into is one of the places set furthest back, right along the edge of the cliff. Jensen's ready to ask if his usual combination of board shorts and t-shirt are gonna cut it wherever they're going--not that Jeff's wearing anything different--when the drive ends in an open field, with trucks and Jeeps parked haphazardly, and a tiki-torch-lit footpath heading down along the cliff at the far end.

"Hear that?" Jeff asks, as he cuts the engine. Under the sounds of a party in full swing, Jensen can hear the surf pounding at the base of the cliff, deeper and rougher than the quiet rhythm of the bay outside Jeff's windows. He nods and follows Jeff out of the Jeep. The moon isn't quite full, but out here on the headland, with only a few lights from the other houses in the background, it's bright enough that he can see the spark in Jeff's eyes. "First storm of the season," Jeff says. "Not really big enough to fuel the break, but it's coming."

The path that Jensen assumes leads to the house is crowded, people standing with bottles and glasses in their hands, kids weaving in and out, shrieking with laughter and excess energy. They make it less than ten steps toward the house before somebody recognizes Jeff and the greetings go up as though he was the prodigal son. He exchanges a few back-slapping hugs and shakes a lot of hands, but always keeps moving, so Jensen sticks close. He gets some curious looks, but nothing unfriendly. Then again, he's pretty curious himself. Jeff doesn't seem to be in an enlightening mood, though, so Jensen's fine with doing his own good bit of looking. Jeff breaks away from the crowd and cocks an eyebrow at him.

"For a place that has to rate a seven-figure price tag, easy, this crowd looks like half the regulars at your place," Jensen says.

"Surfers look the same pretty much anywhere," Jeff says. "Drink the same shitty beer, talk the same trash."

Jensen gets a good look at the house, all modern angles and huge windows, big enough to see inside to the lofts and skylights, and shakes his head. "Most of them don't exactly live like this, though."

"Some of them don't fuck it all up," Jeff says, as he's being pulled into a group who've evidently just flown in from Africa. Jensen moves off to the side, but before Jeff can get loose, he hears a familiar voice.

"Jen!" Jared calls, and Jensen finds himself being pulled into a slightly-drunken hug. "What're you doing here, dude?"

"I have no idea," Jensen mutters, before nodding toward Jeff and adding, "Tagging along with Mr. Popularity."

"Oh," Jared says. "Yeah, that's cool." He grabs a couple of beers from one of the tubs filled with ice that are sitting around everywhere and hands one to Jensen. "Awesome place, yeah?"

"Yeah," Jensen agrees, and then stops short. "Please don't tell me it's yours."

"Nah," Jared laughs. "I don't quite live like this. Not yet, anyway. They just let me in when they party."

"It's the smile," a passing girl says, stopping long enough to drape herself on Jared. "It's irresistible, even if he won't come over from the Dark Side."

Jared laughs and blows her kisses as she continues on her way. "Windsurfing," he explains. "Doesn't really count for much in this crowd."

"Who knew the surfing world has cliques," Jensen says, and Jared shakes his head.

"Like you wouldn't _believe_ ," he says. "You've got the purists, who only ride the longboards and sneer at the shortboarders and don't want to have anything to do with the tow-in guys and all of _them_ get spastic about the windsurfers and don't even get them started on the kite-boarders."

"From where I stand, you're all fucking insane," Jensen says. "But I guess I shouldn't really say that out loud around here."

Jared throws his head back and laughs big. "No, probably not. C'mon, Jeff's not gonna get loose from those guys for a while. You gotta see the ocean from up at the house, even if you do speak sacrilege and heresy."

Jensen lets himself be shepherded through the crowd and up into the house, with plenty of stops and starts as Jared sees people he needs to talk to or hug or exchange insults with. It's slow going, but it's not like Jensen has anything better to be doing. They finally make it through to the other side and Jensen agrees that the view is spectacular. He doesn't add that it's pretty much a given that a house like this would have a great view, and it's actually surprising how easy it is to keep his mouth shut. He decides he'll follow what the girl outside said, and blame it on Jared.

"Where's your girl?" Jensen asks, after another run-in with a couple of laughing, half-drunk girls, who drape themselves all over Jared and all but pinch his cheeks.

"Oh," Jared says, ducking his head. "Um, not so much mine? Just, y'know, a thing. Kinda one-time?"

"Sure," Jensen answers, biting the inside of his cheek to keep a straight face. It's been a _long_ time since he's hung out with anyone who's embarrassed by a one-night-stand. God help him, but it's kind of cute.

When they come full circle, Jeff's still where they left him and the crowd he's with shifts over to let them slide in with an easy welcome. Jensen assumes it's for Jared--the guy wears the 'never met a stranger, only friends he hasn't spent much time with' attitude like he invented it--but it mostly extends to Jensen, too, even before people figure out he's there with Jeff. A couple of them actually recognize him from _Days_ being syndicated overseas--American daytime TV for the worldwide win, he guesses--and he feels like an ass that he can't quite be easy with it, that he's standing there waiting for the cut, the knife twist under the smiles. He leans back against a low wall, and idly watches Jeff down Red Bull-and-vodkas like they're water.

"So," Jared says, sliding in next to him. "Uh, you and Jeff?"

"More or less," Jensen says, a little surprised, because it's been long enough that he thought the topic had dropped off the current conversation list in town. Then again, Jared's barely been around, so Jensen guesses this is the first chance he's had to get up to speed.

"That's, yeah, cool," Jared says. "Jeff's a good guy."

"Fucking hazard behind the wheel," Jensen says, and Jared laughs. "But, yeah, a good guy."

"We hooked up once," Jared blurts out. "Like, a while ago. My eighteenth birthday." He drinks his beer and doesn't quite meet Jensen's eyes. "I mean, I'd had a crush on him, like, before I even figured out I liked guys, and my buddies got me good and drunk on my birthday and I was stupid and pretty much wouldn't take no for an answer."

"Oh, man," Jensen says, trying not to laugh, because the kid's hanging onto his nonchalance with the desperation of mind over matter. "Been there, done that." He smiles when Jared finally looks over at him.

"Yeah?" Jared half-smiles in return. He shrugs and looks like he's trying to pretend he doesn't know his face is beet red. "I pretty much wanted to crawl under a rock every time I saw him after that. For, like, a year."

"That bad?"

Jared shrugs. "I was eighteen and wasted. It can't have been all that great."

"Not bad enough that you guys don't still hang out."

"I'm not around all that much. I mean, yeah, right now I'm here, but the season's kicking into gear and I spend the rest of year on the road. It got easier after I'd been away." Jared relaxes a little and Jensen wonders how long ago he's talking, how old Jared is now. 21? 22? Old enough to get served, but probably not by a lot.

"It was stupid," Jared sighs. "Just a dumb thing to do. I don't even know why I told you; nobody else knows."

"Really," Jensen says. "You managed to avoid the express gossip line that's Danneel on a slow day?"

"Yeah, well, I guess we got lucky. And, seriously, there was no reason for Jeff to be telling anyone." Jared shrugs. "It happened and it's done and I was, just, I heard you guys had hooked up and, y'know, that's cool."

"Okay," Jensen answers, slowly. "It was... kind of a surprise, but, yeah, it's been good."

"Good."

"Great." Jensen's missing something, he's sure. "We done here?"

"Yeah, yeah," Jared answers, grinning. "Sorry, man--it's just, y'know, small--"

"Small town, yeah, heard that before," Jensen says. "Not sure why I ever left Texas..."

"C'mon," Jared says, his smile even bigger, if that's possible. "Let me introduce you to some more people; this is an awesome crowd, mostly guys who go for the big waves. You think _I'm_ nuts, wait 'til you see these guys."

"Awesome," Jensen mutters, ducking the good-natured smack Jared aims at the back of his head, but letting himself be pulled back into the crowd.


	3. Chapter 3

  
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 **\-- 3 --**

Jensen sticks mostly to beer during the night, so he's okay to drive when Jared manhandles the keys to the Jeep out of Jeff's pocket. He wonders when he turned into the designated driver kind of a guy, but then again, he's not really all that sober. It's more that the other two are _gone_.

Jensen has no idea if Jared's leaving a car or why he's leaving with them but it's pure comedy gold watching all six-four of drunken windsurfer getting himself into the back of Jeff's CJ-7. It's even better when they get to Jared's place, halfway up Haleakala, with what Jensen would bet would be spectacular views, and Jensen gets to imagine Jared in the land of manicured landscaping and security huts.

"You're not quite living like where we just left, yet?" Jensen tosses back over his shoulder. Jared hadn't been lying earlier--it's still a condo development--but it's definitely not slumming.

"I know it's up-country, but it has a pool," Jared sighs, looking half-embarrassed, half-resigned. "I can get in a couple of miles before I really even wake up. Makes it easier to train."

He directs Jensen around the curving streets--the kind of curves that are there deliberately, so the landscapers can create "plantscapes"--to his corner unit, and it's almost as amusing watching him unfold himself out of the back, groaning and stretching.

"Thanks for the ride," Jared says. "Drinking with those guys is gonna kill me one day."

"Lightweight," Jensen answers, but he's mildly impressed that Jared gets the door open on the first try. It gives him a slight bit of hope that Jared might actually make it to a bed before he passes out. He glances over at Jeff, expecting him to be gone, too, but finds dark eyes looking back at him fairly steadily.

"Christ, I am not in the fucking mood to deal with shit in town tonight," Jeff says, his voice gritty and raw, which isn't surprising seeing as how Jensen doesn't think he shut up for more than ten seconds during the night.

"Yeah?" Jensen drawls. "I never would have guessed." He navigates back out to the main road and slants another look at Jeff. "Where to, man?"

"Somewhere where there aren't waves." Jeff leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes.

"Yeah," Jensen snorts. "How drunk are you again?"

"Really, really fuckin' drunk," Jeff answers, sighing. "Home's fine."

Jensen only takes one wrong turn and figures it out pretty quick, so he's parking the Jeep at Jeff's in less than twenty minutes, but it's still edging on toward dawn.

"Come on," Jeff says, hauling himself out of the passenger seat. "Key's on the ring you've got."

He's more-or-less steady on his feet and really damn impatient for a guy who Jensen figures has a blood alcohol count close to lethal injection territory.

"You figure your shit out yet?" Jeff asks, as Jensen gets the door open.

"Smooth," Jensen says. "If I didn't know better it'd be like I was the one trying to drink my body weight in vodka tonight."

"Don't knock the classics, boy." Jeff doesn't bother with lights, just moves straight toward the bedroom, looking back over his shoulder at Jensen. "If you're staying, let's go."

Jensen shrugs and follows Jeff, not saying anything until they're on the bed. "No," he finally says, into the dark. "I haven't figured shit out yet."

"Welcome to the club," Jeff answers.

***

The shower's running when Jensen pries his eyes open; the clock says just past eight, which, given that it'd been almost dawn when they got back, is motherfucking insane. He pulls a pillow over his head and goes back out, waking up again when Jeff comes out of the bathroom, towel low on his hips. He looks like hell, twenty years older than he is, eyes red and face drawn, but his hands are steady as he pulls clean clothes from the dresser. Jensen groans into the pillow.

"I'm not disturbing you, am I, pretty boy?" Jeff's voice sounds even rougher than he looks. "Wouldn't want to be fucking with your beauty sleep."

"How the fuck are you even vertical, old man?" Jensen ended up sleeping in his contacts, but even dry-eyed and blurry, he catches the glare Jeff sends his way.

"Years of experience, Jenny."

Jeff's gone before Jensen can do anything more than flip him off, but he seeing as how the glare wasn't accompanied by a 'get the fuck out of my bed,' Jensen rolls back over and crashes back out, filing the slight edge in Jeff's voice away for later.

***

Jensen can hear them before he even pushes open the door to the bar, but even so, he barely has time to flatten himself against the side as Sandy comes flying through.

"For God's sake, just go by the bank," Jeff growls. "Last time I looked, I wasn't paying you for insights into my life."

"The bank will be open for _hours_ and trust me, you couldn't pay me enough to take on your life." She rolls her eyes at Jensen, pony-tail flipping as she turns down the street. "See if you can shove some aspirin down his stubborn throat, because I will _not_ be responsible for my actions if he's this crabby all night long."

Jeff slams down a case of beer, still growling under his breath, like now that he's started, he doesn't see much need to stop, even if Sandy's three blocks away and still telling everyone she sees to start gearing up for the big surf because Jeff's in one of his moods.

"Hey, there, Prince Charming," Jensen says, letting the wind catch the door and slam it shut, and then smirking at Jeff's wince. "You having fun pulling pigtails and being mean to the little girls?"

"Fuck you."

"Any time, old man." Jensen leans against the bar and lets a little bit of a smile curve his mouth. Jeff gives him the once-over that says he gets that Jensen was serious, but before he can answer the door bangs open again and Hurricane Jared blows in.

"Jeff, man, can I talk to you?" Jared's voice is hoarse and his energy has a sharp, manic edge. Jensen starts to put it down to the late night, but then he catches how Jared keeps glancing over at the door. The guys Jensen can see through the big, plate glass window are wearing the standard beach uniform of board shorts and surfing shirts, but they still scream corporate money. Jared drags Jeff off toward the small office Jeff keeps in the back, but Jeff stops them right inside the kitchen door and it doesn't take long before he's coming right back out again, his jaw so tight Jensen would bet his next residual that he's ground the top layer of enamel off his teeth.

"For Christ's sake, Jared," Jeff grits out, not even bothering to look back. "Grow up and make a decision on your own."

Steve's head whips around at that; even Chris stops what he's doing and slews around to stare. Jensen knows his own face is nowhere near under control, but Jeff's slamming glasses around and Jared goes out in a rush, his head down to avoid eye contact. He doesn't slam the door, but he doesn't make an effort to catch it, either, and the wind does the work for him.

"Mother _fuck_ ," Jeff snarls, all but throwing down the crate of glasses he's got in his hands and stalking out the kitchen door.

Jensen really, _really_ doesn't need this shit, but he waves Steve off and follows Jeff anyway. He catches a flash of surprise in Steve's eyes, which pisses him off to no fucking end, but since he's not exactly planning on playing peacemaker with Jeff's attitude, him being a little extra aggravated isn't gonna hurt.

"Yo, dumbass," Jensen says, when he gets through the kitchen and close enough to the office to see Jeff. He's standing with his back to the door, hands planted on the desk, head down. "That was impressive. What's next? Lessons on how to kick puppies?"

"You come for your fuck, boy?" Jeff doesn't bother to turn around. "Because I'm not seeing much reason for you to be around otherwise."

"Oh, yeah," Jensen drawls, as irritatingly as possible. "Now, that'd be entertaining--fucking you _and_ that chip on your shoulder."

"Haven't heard you complain yet," Jeff says, but the fight's draining out of him. Jensen can see it in the slope of his back, even before Jeff slants a look sideways at him. "The chip's always there, in case you hadn't figured that out yet." Shrugging, Jensen holds Jeff's gaze until Jeff closes his eyes and shakes his head once. "Jesus, I need to get my act together."

"First good idea you've had all day, far as I can tell." Now that Jensen's reasonably certain he's not going to have to be ducking a right hook, he moves closer, until he can lean against the door. "Maybe you could clear out for a while."

"I do that every time I have a shitty day and I lose this, too." Jeff draws a breath in deep, holds it, and then stands up and scrubs his hand through his hair. "All right, let me go see if Sandy's back from the bank so I can get off her shit list, at least."

"This should be good," Jensen says. Jeff gives him a long, level look, but he doesn't have much room to argue. "Raincheck on the fuck?"

Jeff snorts and bangs open the swinging door to the front room, but he's still a little off his game and Jensen catches the half-smile that quirks up the corner of his mouth. It's still only Steve and Chris out there, both of them watching Jensen and Jeff with frank appraisal. Jeff mutters something that might be an apology or might be a variation on 'fuck off.' Jensen figures it's about an even chance on either.

"Well, aren't you the sweet talker," Chris says, when Jensen finally wanders over to where he's working on the sound set-up, such as it is. He gestures to where Jeff's actually picked up the bottle of ibuprofen Steve's left on the bar, all without threatening to rip anybody's head off. "Must be those pretty eyes 'cause you weren't back there long enough for anything else."

"Wouldn't you like to know," Jensen says, gritting his teeth at how easily Chris can put him back to being twelve. Chris grins, like he knows exactly how irritating he's being, the fucker, and Jensen rolls his eyes. "He's back down off the edge. More or less."

"Yeah, that's good," Chris says. "Seein' as how I figure he can lighten the hell up or end up running the place himself tonight. Or get his head knocked off by a little bitty thing."

Jensen shrugs, because he's pretty sure Jeff's got a handle on whatever's bugging the shit out of him and there's not much more Jensen's prepared to do about it, but then Steve comes over and all of Jensen's disinterest goes up in smoke. He stands there while Steve and Chris poke and prod at the wiring, thinking that it's okay, he can deal, right up until he hears himself saying, "Thanks for the show of support, man," and walking off to go haul in cases of beer.

***

Personally, Jensen thinks Sandy lets Jeff off the hook too easily, but then, she really is a nice person, and Jensen should be thankful for small mercies, because even though she doesn't pitch a fit at Jeff--not even when she finds out about the thing with Jared--and Jeff's managing not to act like a complete prick, it's still a long day. Jensen's having no luck letting go of shit, enough that he's not even trying to hide how he's biting his tongue whenever Steve's around. He takes off later in the afternoon and ends up going for a run, his best tactic when he wants to punch something and has enough brain cells firing to know it's a bad idea.

Somewhere around the two-mile mark, it hits him that he maybe hasn't done too badly with the clean slate being out here on the edge of the Pacific has handed him. He stops out by Ho'okipa and takes his time walking it out, so he doesn't cramp up, and wants to punch something all over again, because it sucks beyond the telling that the first time he gets slapped in the face with how things used to be ends up coming from _Steve_.

A truck pulls up alongside him; Jensen steps back off the road before he recognizes Danneel behind the wheel.

"Hey, gorgeous." It's her usual greeting, but delivered with about a tenth of her usual energy. "What're you doing out here? I thought you were strictly working Baby Beach on your own."

"Yeah," Jensen says. "I'm out here... hell, I don't know why I'm out here." That sounds marginally better than _I'm having a tantrum over my ex thinking I'm as much of a jerk as I think I am_. "Not surfing, though, which, by the way, I know you've got the Grand prix or whatever coming up and all, but you look like shit."

"Normally, I'd leave your sweet ass right here for saying something like that," Danneel says. "But since looking like shit is about a thousand times better than I thought I was doing, I'm gonna say thank you, instead." She jerks her head toward the passenger seat. "You want a ride somewhere?"

Jensen considers running back for all of a second and a half. "Sure," he says. "As long as you promise you're not going to pass out at the wheel and kill me."

"Pinkie swear, baby." Danneel makes a show of checking for traffic and eases the truck back out onto the road from the soft shoulder. "I haven't dragged my ass out of bed before dawn for the last three months just to die the week I can actually do something for real." She shakes her head, laughing a little. "I might flame out from nerves, but I am way too fucking stubborn to give myself an actual physical out."

"Good to know," Jensen says. It's an easy ride back into town, and then there's no real way to avoid going back to Steve's place. Somebody's looking out for Jensen, though: the little house is empty, so he can shower in peace and put off trying to figure out what he's supposed to do next. Most of his brain wants to take the easy way out, open a beer and sit outside and listen to the island settle for the night, but another part is stubbornly insisting he'd be a fucking tool if he did it that way. He's usually pretty good at ignoring that voice, but tonight it won't let him go.

It's already packed and hot at Jeff's, people crowded around tables and spilling out of the door. Sandy's sliding in and around the crowd, her tray up over head as she shows the ropes to another girl, and Jeff barely has time to nod when he catches sight of Jensen. Steve and Chris are both on stage with guitars, but they're taking turns singing, so Jensen's guessing it's going to be a long night.

The usual table's taken--and Jared isn't around anyway, not that that's much of a surprise--so Jensen finds a couple of square inches at the end of the bar and reaches over to get himself a draft. It's a seriously tourist crowd tonight; about the only other person Jensen recognizes is Sandy's boyfriend, Zack or Zeke or whatever, standing next to him.

"Zeke," Jensen says, in his best I'm-really-not-in-the-mood-for-social-niceties-but-I-like-your-girlfriend tone.

"Zack," Zack corrects. Jensen grunts a non-verbal apology, but Z-boy never slows down enough to hear it. "I seriously don't get the appeal of this place, but whatever it is, Morgan must be raking it in."

Jensen nods and reminds himself he shouldn't turn his back on the idiot because Sandy's all but beaming at seeing them talking. "It's got a good vibe," he says, as short as he can.

"No telling what he could make if he sold the property; he's had it since there wasn't anything here but the hippies." Zack waves his hand. "He could set up again anywhere. It's not like this is anything all that special."

Jensen's a lot more pissed at the dismissive tone than he probably should be; Zack's so fucking clueless it's ridiculous.

"Well, like you said, he's been here a while," Jensen says, through gritted teeth. "He's dug in."

"Not really my scene," Zack says. "But hey, as long as it's somebody's right?" He laughs in a perfect imitation of the last casting agent Jensen saw, the one who told him that he was sure Jensen was somebody's dream boy, but the pretty look just wasn't working for him.

Jensen does turn away on that, reaching back over the bar to refill his glass and counting to ten. Zack's moved off to annoy some other guy by the time Jensen looks back, almost certainly because the new guy is higher up on the food chain than Jensen is. Thank God.

"Moron," he mutters.

"Yeah," Jeff agrees, closer than Jensen had realized. "But the last one was dealing out of her bedroom, and the one before that couldn't think his way out of a goddamned paper bag." He slides another beer down toward Jensen. "She'll tell you she's still light-years ahead of me, though."

"Yeah? She right?"

"Hell, yeah," Jeff says, shrugging. "None of hers have come after her with a broken bottle."

"Good to know I've got room to improvise," Jensen says. Jeff snorts and goes back to being the genial host, but Jensen can see the edges around the act tonight.

Danneel blows Jensen a kiss when she comes in, but she doesn't fight her way down to where he is, just sits up on the other end of the bar, holding court with a couple of guys Jensen vaguely recognizes--maybe the guys who rent the other place Jeff owns, more of the crowd Jensen privately calls the Pro Fun Circuit, who move with the weather--snowboarding in the winter, surfing on the shoulder seasons, rock-climbing and kayaking in the summer.

Steve and Chris switch off playing most of the night; Jensen could go and hang out with whoever's not on stage, but he stays where he is. Jeff doesn't say anything. It could be because he's going non-stop behind the bar, but Jensen's pretty sure it's more because he's staying out of it all.

Jensen doesn't move from where he's lounging until the last few drunk idiots head out to look for their boards. Jensen hopes they don't succeed; he can't see how they think they're sober enough to take on the ocean, but of all the things that aren't his problem, they're not even making the list. Jeff looks around, like he's knows he should start closing up for the night, but doesn't have a clue where to begin.

"Raincheck?" Jensen asks.

Jeff looks around one more time before he nods. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah." His voice strengthens, but he still sounds like there's not a whole hell of a lot he cares about. Jensen could take offense, but since it matches his mood perfectly, he follows Jeff out the back. They don't bother with lights at the house, or with any of the niceties. Jensen strips down as soon as they get in the bedroom, nothing fancy, just drops his shirt and shorts on the floor and leans back when Jeff crowds up close behind him.

Jeff's got his hands all over Jensen, rougher than their usual--nothing Jensen's going to complain about, even if he is going to end up marked all to hell and back--but he's not in the mood for a quick fuck against the wall tonight.

"Bed," he says, shoving Jeff in that direction, hissing as Jeff's nails scrape low on his belly. "First things first." He pushes Jeff down on the bed and goes to his knees, shouldering Jeff's legs apart, making a place for himself. Jeff stays quiet, but Jensen's been with him long enough to know how what he likes; knows to lick over the head of Jeff's dick as lightly as he can, and then spend an equal amount of time teasing the sweet spot under the crown. Jeff holds out longer than Jensen expects, but on the third go-round, his hands knot tight in Jensen's hair.

Whatever it is Jeff doesn't want to deal with, Jensen will match him straight up. Sex isn't going to fix things, but it'll at least wear them out enough to sleep.

***

When Jeff's watch beeps the next morning, Jensen knows he can stay as long as he wants at Jeff's, or he can go hang out wherever Jeff's heading off to, stay there long enough that Steve will have gotten back home and headed out again. He doesn't, though. He rolls over and finds his clothes, and fills a thermos from the Mr. Coffee on Jeff's counter. Jeff's still in lock-down mode, leaving with nothing but a quick nod, but Jensen figures getting out on the water by himself will probably help more than anything Jensen can do to knock whatever's eating him out of commission.

It's still dark as Jensen walks the familiar way between Jeff's and Steve's. When he gets to the little frame house, he can see Steve moving around inside, the usual pre-dawn routine of caffeine and rashguards and energy bars.

Jensen stands out on the grass for a long time until eventually--of course--Steve comes out. Steve hesitates when he sees Jensen, which is about as weird as it gets, and jolts Jensen out of his indecision. He takes the two steps to get to the bottom of the steps.

"I wasn't surprised that you were going after him--I mean, I was, but not for the reason you're thinking." Steve's face is still in the shadows; Jensen can't see it, not really, even though they're only a couple of feet apart, but he sees Steve react when he can't hold back from muttering, "Give me a fucking break."

"Jen," Steve sighs. "C'mon. I know you. I _know_ you." He doesn't add _sometimes better than you do_ , but Jensen hears it loud and fucking clear, which is pretty much the problem, except he doesn't know how to say, _You're not supposed to be the one who's surprised when I'm not acting like an ass_ without sounding like he's begging for scraps.

Steve puts the thermos down on the top step and sits down next to it. "You don't let go, not when you give a shit." He looks up, right at Jensen. "You care about something, it's next to impossible to get you to walk."

"Maybe," Jensen says, suddenly sure they're not talking about Jeff or the day before. "Hasn't really helped much."

"Okay, yeah." Steve keeps right on holding Jensen's eye. "I left anyway. But it wasn't about you--"

"Yeah, we've had this talk. It wasn't me, you needed out, needed someplace that wasn't there." Jensen waves a little, encompassing the house and the mountains behind it, the ocean in the other direction. Chris, asleep somewhere inside. "I got it." It's not really the truth, though; Jensen's never quite been able to believe that was all it was, and Steve probably knows that, too.

"I couldn't stay," Steve says, after a lengthening silence that Jensen really can't call anything but awkward. "I know you never quite believed that, but I'm glad you came. I didn't think you would, not really. Yesterday... it--I just hadn't realized you'd dug yourself in here that much. Enough that you cared. So--"

"Steve--" Jensen starts, but Steve's not quite finished.

"So yeah, _that_ surprised me… and I can't decide if I'm more happy that you're here, that you're really _here_ and you care, or…"

"Or what?" Jensen's voice is stuck somewhere in his throat.

"Or really pissed off with the universe for the timing of all this. Everything."

Steve hauls himself to his feet and bumps his shoulder into Jensen as he goes past. Jensen could stop him, but since he doesn't have any idea what to say, he lets him go. As he goes up the steps, he's not at all surprised to see Chris watching from just inside the screen door.

"If this is the part where you tell me what an idiot I am, can we skip ahead to where you leave me to contemplate my general worthlessness?" Jensen says.

"You're not the only idiot," Chris says, shrugging and stepping back. "It's pretty damn entertaining, if you ask me."

"You know, if there's one thing I _am_ sure of, it's that I didn't. Ask you," Jensen says, and he means for it to come out more sharply than it does, but he can blame that on the rest of the weirdness that's been this day so far.

"Nope," Chris agrees. "Doesn't mean it's not true." He wanders back over to the kitchen and starts grinding coffee beans. "This'll be ready in ten," he says, which gives Jensen enough time to pretend like he's got a grip on things and go take a shower.

***

"Two more beers," Sandy yells. Between the crowd and Steve and Chris jamming on stage, Jensen has to bend close to hear her. He might not be as into the whole surfing-as-Zen thing as the rest of them, but it doesn't take a genius to pick up that things have shifted. It's not only Jeff's--every place in town is packing them in. At Jeff's, though, it's not only tourists, but the crowd everyone's coming to see, the guys waiting around for the big stuff, for the breaks from the first set of storms out in the Pacific.

It's pretty easy to figure out who are the tourists: the ones who come in yelling for Jeff are who everyone else is here to see. Jeff knows them all, every last detail about competitions and exhibitions in California and Oahu and Australia and South Africa. Jensen remembers the kids from Hana and their shock that he didn't surf and understands it a little better now.

It's not just old home week, though; Jeff never takes a break, never sits down unless he's out on the floor with a group. He always does decent business, but as the week goes along, Jensen figures it has to be like Christmas for a toy store, both the good and the bad. Steve spends every spare minute he's got dealing with whatever Jeff can't get to; Sandy's a blur, weaving in and out of the crowded tables; and even Chris is hauling cases off supplier trucks in the morning. Jensen's been telling his inner bitch, the one that keeps mentioning how none of this is his problem, that he would have to be a complete dick to sit around and ignore everything. He's not positive it's working, but he figures the entire trip has been an exercise in ignoring that voice, so he might as well keep going.

Right as Jeff finishes up the round of shooters Sandy needs and Jensen adds the beers, Chris calls for Jensen. "This one doesn't sound right without you, man."

There's a smattering of applause that's not so faint as to be embarrassing; when Jensen looks, he knows all the faces behind it, never mind that the place is jammed full of strangers. Steve's sliding through familiar chords and Chris is weaving notes around him already.

"Christ," he mutters to Jeff, wiping his hands on the towel he has tucked into his jeans. "Bartender and back-up singer. Every goddamned thing I swore I wasn't going to end up doing."

"Yeah," Jeff drawls, as Jensen goes over the bar. "I can tell how much it's fucking you up."

Jensen flips him off automatically, but Jeff's got a point. This _should_ be bothering him a whole lot more than it is--it should feel like he's failing--but then he's managed to make it through the mob and up onto the stage. Steve's hitting the chords that really start the song and there's no time to think about anything but hitting his entry.

***

Steve still doesn't miss many mornings out on the water; Jensen's not sure how he's not killing himself from sleep deprivation, but then again, Jensen's out there a lot, too. He usually isn't catching more than one decent ride, but even if he's only sitting out on the board, it's worth dragging his ass out of bed. The clouds sweep in one morning, and Jensen doesn't even think to try to set up and catch a ride, just sits in the middle of the quiet storm and lets the sound of rain on water sink into him.

Steve drifts over, not saying anything as the squall blows through.

"You're not writing," Jensen says, after a bit. He's not entirely sure why he's bringing that up, but it feels like the right time.

"Chris been telling stories?" Steve asks.

"A little," Jensen admits. "It's hard to miss, though."

The wind picks up and starts whipping the rain down on them too hard to be comfortable, but neither one of them makes a move to leave. After a bit, Steve says, "When I left LA, I wanted out so bad, I couldn't think straight, and Hawaii was the last place I could remember that everything was easy. Right."

He stops talking, but Jensen knows he's not finished.

"I drifted around for a couple of months... Spent some time on Oahu and the Big Island, thought about going over to Molokai, but ended up here. I didn't expect to stay for more than a couple of weeks, but everything fell in place, and here I am." He looks at Jensen and laughs. "None of which answered your question, though."

Jensen shrugs. "You don't have to answer. I was just curious."

"Nah, it's okay," Steve says. "I was writing all along, but it was crap, all of it. Constant noise. And I got here and kinda just stuck and… I kept tripping over how I couldn't hear anything over that noise. So… I stopped. Figured I'd see what I could hear if I wasn't trying to lay it all out there again."

Jensen nods. Steve sounds okay about it, even good, so he's not going to push.

"Chris doesn't get this," Steve says, unexpectedly. "Being out here. Never has."

"'M not sure I get it either." Jensen shakes the rain out of his eyes. "Not so I can make sense of it."

"You're here, yeah?"

"Yeah." Jensen grins. "Don't ask me why, though."

"Whatever works," Steve says, smiling, and Jensen's not going to argue with that.

***

Jeff won't let Danneel work, not when she's supposed to be keeping sharp while everyone waits around for the guys running the Grand Prixe to decide that the weather and wave conditions are right. Sandy has a never-ending stream of friends who fill in, but Dani comes by every night anyway, lets Jeff and Sandy mother-hen her a little, gets in a little flirting with the Pro-Fun boys. Jensen's seen Sandy with Jared a couple of mornings, but Jared's still staying away from the cafe. Sandy says he's focusing on the upcoming competition, but Jensen doesn't need Danneel rolling her eyes to know that Jared's not exactly the type to go into hibernation before an event. She shoots Jeff a look of equal parts exasperation and resignation; Jeff ignores her, like he's ignoring everything else around him, and she sighs and goes back to moaning to Jensen about the goddamned weather not cooperating.

"Jared said the word is day after tomorrow looks good. And the day after that, too." Sandy slides in beside Danneel and loads up her tray. "When do the women go off?"

"Freestyle is set for the second day, early." Danneel puts her head down on the bar with a faint whimper.

"You're gonna kick butt, girl." Sandy pets her hair gently, and then smiles up at Jensen. "Jared's heat is supposed to start around four on the first day. Want to watch with me?"

"Me?" Jensen asks. "You know I won't have the faintest idea of what I'll be looking at, right?"

"Dani's all official, so she gets to watch from the pavilions. Zack hasn't called me back, but he probably has to work, and I'm not in the mood to go anywhere with Jeff," Sandy says, matter-of-factly. She glances over at Jeff and sighs. "Just… not dealing with it. So, do you want to watch with me or not?

"Yeah," Jensen says. Sandy isn't bothering to lower her voice; Jensen's fairly certain Jeff's heard every word, but he's not getting in the middle of those two. No way. "Sure."

***

For such a tiny person, Sandy is an unstoppable force when she wants to be. She pokes and slides and smiles and Jensen's pretty sure he sees her elbow a few guys twice her size out of her way, until they're in what she deems the perfect spot for watching the competition, high on the cliff looking over the water. Jensen's been out to Ho'okipa, even managed to catch one memorable ride that felt like he was going to die any second, but he's never seen it like this, with a couple hundred people jamming in close to watch the first rounds. He doesn't want to think how many are going to show for the finals. The wind is steady and strong and the waves are breaking fast, right on top of each other and not only nonstop, but definitely in stupid size territory, the kind where you have to be insane to even think about splashing around in the shallows when they break, much less deliberately going out to ride them.

An air horn goes off right as they get settled and the guys already out working the waves start to back off. Jensen recognizes Jared as one of the ones leaving the beach, the sail on his rig featuring headache-inducing stripes of pink and orange. Jensen's actually a little surprised Jared's wetsuit isn't striped to match, but he supposes he should be grateful for small mercies.

"Here we go." Sandy takes a deep breath and pulls a pair of binoculars out of her backpack and it takes about ten seconds, long enough for Jared to hit his first jump, for Jensen to decide that Jared really and truly is missing a part of his brain.

***

When the air horn goes off again to end the heat, Sandy knows just where to go to meet up with Jared. Judging from the mob that's surrounding Jared, Jensen figures that the reason he's a little shell-shocked isn't just that he's never seen a world class competition before. Jared breaks off from the group surrounding him and lopes over toward Jensen and Sandy, smacking high-fives randomly as he goes. He grabs Sandy like she doesn't weigh much more than a doll (which she doesn't) and laughs along with her.

"Not a brain cell in there, huh?" Jensen says, smacking Jared on the back of his head. "I don't know what to say, man. I guess, good heat?"

"Except for the part where I thought you were going for more than one spock-540," Sandy says. "And you kind of stuttered on the shaka."

"Picky, picky, picky," Jared answers, turning her upside down and ignoring her shrieks. "She's way more into this shit than I am."

"Jared, come on, stop--" Sandy's laughing so hard she can barely speak.

"Not until you say something nice." Jared's smirk is fairly impressive, given his usual open smile.

"This is total blackmail--stop! Okay, the stalled loop that you threw at the end? That was gorgeous."

Jensen has no idea what she's talking about, except he figures the stalled loop was the thing that looked like just a jump, Jared hanging in the air at a truly _stupid_ height before whipping down and over and into a front flip, kind of like what he's doing to Sandy right now. Jensen takes a quick step back to avoid being smacked by wildly flailing arms as Jared flips her back upright and sets her on her feet.

The crowd shifts; up on the side of the pavilions, at the edge of the parking lot, he's somehow not surprised to see Jeff leaning against his Jeep, watching them. Judging by how far he and Sandy had to walk after they'd parked by the side of the road, Jensen figures Jeff's been there for a while. He turns back to tell Sandy, and catches Jared in an uncharacteristically still moment, looking past him, watching Jeff back, his eyes serious and guarded.

A dozen little things start shifting in Jensen's head--the beer in the cooler that nobody but Jared drinks, all the times Jared's around before- or after-hours, Jeff watching Jared walk out of the café with a pick-up, Steve's voice telling Jensen the next day that he'd never seen Jeff go home with anyone local… They've been there all along; Jensen's just finally seeing them at the right angle.

Jared turns away to talk to a couple of guys with video equipment, but Jeff doesn't take his eyes off him, not that Jensen can tell, and all the sliding pieces fall into place nice and neat. Jensen gets within conversational distance of Jeff before Jeff even notices he's there.

"So," Jensen says, ignoring Jeff's growl, "I was thinking there had to be a reason why you're fucking around with me when you can't take your eyes off Jared, and he's pretty much the same with you. I figure he's young enough to be stupid about shit like that. All I got for you is that you're plain stupid."

Jeff ignores him, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shaking one out. He cups his hands around his lighter and drags deep before he looks at Jensen through the smoke, his eyes flat. "Not now, Jen."

Jensen intercepts the pack before Jeff slips it back into his pocket. "Nice day, pretty view... Jared's got people lining up to talk to him; Sandy's a little distracted." He waits until Jeff takes the hint and hands over his lighter, too. "No time like the present."

Jensen's halfway done with the cigarette before Jeff sighs. "Look at him," Jeff says, motioning to where Jared's still talking to guys with notebooks and cameras, gesturing enthusiastically toward the water, breaking off occasionally to yell insults and compliments back and forth with half a dozen other guys, all wearing competitor numbers.

"Yeah?" Jensen shrugs. "He likes what he does. He's good at what he does."

"He's not just good," Jeff says. "Most of the guys out there could do what he does. But they don't. They don't focus; they get caught up in fifteen kinds of BS; they don't take it seriously. He does."

"Okay, I'll give you that," Jensen answers. "Still doesn't answer my question."

"He... doesn't need anything distracting him." Jeff's studying the ground in front of him, refusing to make eye contact. "He needs to quit thinking I know _shit_."

"Because you're tired of being Yoda?" Jensen needs to remember to keep his mouth shut; it's not like he's going to get anything out of this deal, except for probably not getting fucked anymore, if the look in Jeff's eyes is anything to go by. He'd stab himself if he could, but since he was stupid enough to open the whole can of worms, he's damn well not backing off now. "Give me a fuckin' break, okay? You want me to go away, at least spin me something halfway believable. Like, hell---I don't even know. I mean, he's young, yeah, but he's not that much younger than me, and I think we've established that fucking me's not a problem. "

"Fine," Jeff grits out. "You want believable--how about this. All this--" he jerks his hand out, encompassing the crowd and the video equipment, Jared and all the people crowded around him. "It can go like _that_." He snaps his fingers. "Especially-- _especially_ \--if you're cocky and stupid and don't keep your eye on the ball. If you're so fucking full of yourself, hey, king kahuna, hellman, so fucking blind to how thin that knife's edge under your feet really is."

"Right," Jensen drawls, taking the final drag off his cigarette. "Let's be real clear here, and please don't tell me I'm the only one who knows we're not talking about Jared now."

Jeff curses, low and ugly, but doesn't say anything else, and finally Jensen sighs. "Look, I get that blowing out your knee fucked things up, but--it's an insane way to make a living. Shit happens. Hell, how many guys went down today--"

"Going down out there, that's one thing," Jeff says, flat and dull. "Spending half your life fucked-up, enough so you take yourself out just walking down stairs, that's another."

"Okay, so--"

"And keeping yourself fucked up after _that_ , so you don't have to deal with reality, until there's nothing left but a condemned building you don't even remember buying...that's something else altogether." Jeff crushes out the rest of his cigarette. "Nobody-- _nobody_ \--needs to be coming to me for anything."

"Yeah, because you haven't done anything since then." Jensen keeps his eyes on the ocean, on the steady roll of the waves and the back-and-forth of the four guys who are working the last heat of the day. "You know, I get the whole not being happy with history thing, but there's that and then there's just plain running scared. Jared's managing pretty well. You might want to keep that in mind for the next time you tell yourself we're fucking so you don't mess things up for him."

Sandy's coming toward them; Jensen pushes himself off the hood of the Jeep and goes to meet her. He could hang out here longer, but he's not counting on Jeff giving him a ride back to town and he'll be damned if he's going to walk five miles just to say more things for Jeff to ignore.

"That looked like it went well," Sandy says, squinting over Jensen's shoulder to where Jeff's still wallowing.

"You have no idea," Jensen answers. Sandy snorts, and Jensen remembers the odd looks she's been giving Jeff ever since he started sleeping with Jensen. "Well, okay, maybe you do."

"I'd say that they're really, really stupid, but they've been there for me, through a lot of spectacularly bad guys, so I don't have the room to talk."

"Me either," Jensen says. "But I said it anyway."

"You know what?" Sandy links her arm through his and smiles up at him. "Even if Steve's not around, I have the keys to the cafe, and a killer recipe for rum punch. And if that's too much work, we can always stop and get a shave ice and pour some vodka over it."

"You're on, darlin'," Jensen says, smiling back at her. The side of the road is rocky and uneven enough that they can't walk quickly, but even with having to pick their way along the road to where they parked Sandy's car, plus the crazy tourist traffic, they'll still be back in town in under an hour. "You are definitely on."

***

The spiked shave ice wins out in the end; on a whim, Jensen grabs a couple extra and passes them along to Steve and Chris at the cafe. Peace offering for Steve, who-the-fuck-knows-what for Chris, but it's less of thing than he's half-afraid it'll be. Steve just grins at him; Chris actually glances up from where he's scribbling something in his notebook to say thanks; and Sandy looks like she's about to pat him on the head for being a good boy. At least there's vodka, Jensen thinks, settling himself on the bar within easy reach of the bottle.

Jeff comes in right as they're licking the last sticky drops off their hands, everyone nice and mellow. Jensen waits for the blow-up, but Jeff just ducks behind the bar and reaches for the coffee.

"It's... Christ, I thought I had this under control," Jeff says, quietly enough that Jensen has to move closer to hear him. "All of it."

"Tell me about it," Jensen says, maybe a little more honestly than he intends. Jeff snorts and Jensen can't help smiling, too. "Your call, man. I'm good either way."

"Your heartbreak is killing me," Jeff says, dry enough to cure paint.

"Ditto." Jensen crumples the little paper cone and rings the trash bin behind the bar for a three-pointer. "Swear to God, I won't be coming after you with a broken bottle."

It's not really much, but it's not just going along with whatever, either. Jensen feels a little stupid at the jolt of something--satisfaction, maybe; or pride--that he gets when Jeff gives him a long, thoughtful look and nods.

"Steve," Jeff says, more loudly. "I've been out at Hook since sun-up; I'm gonna grab a shower and be back in five. It's shaping up to be a madhouse tonight--"

"Yeah," Steve says. "Let me call around and see if anybody can drop us some extra kegs."

Chris at least has the sense to wait until Jeff's gone before he cocks an eyebrow at Jensen and says, "No invite to join him? Definitely losing your touch, Hollywood."

"Oh, it's gone like you wouldn't believe, Kane." Jensen picks up the mug Jeff had been drinking from and dumps it in the sink.

Steve's watching and Jensen shrugs. It's not a big deal; he doesn't want Steve thinking it is. Sandy looks around the room, still mostly a disaster from the night before, and sighs.

"Okay, six more days of this insanity, tops. Three, if the weather holds."

Steve pulls her into a one-armed hug and she burrows into him for a second. "I know I should be rooting for six, just for all the money, but I am _so_ tired this year." She tilts her head up to look at Steve. "And don't tell me to stop getting up early to deal with everything else, either."

"You know I wouldn't do that," Steve says, kissing her on the top of her head. "You might want to try a nap sometimes, though."

"No time for that, either, not if I want to have any kind of a social life, even one that's as lame as mine." She disappears into the kitchen with a tray of dirty glasses, and Jensen can hear her banging around with the dishwasher.

Steve heads back into the kitchen to deal with the crates and boxes the suppliers dropped off right as Jeff is coming back through the door on his way to the coffee. As tired as he looks, Jensen wonders if he ever actually went to bed the night before. Now that Jensen's figured out the underlying story, he's willing to bet Jeff sat around and argued with himself all night.

Jensen's halfway through taking notes as Jeff goes through the bar and figures out what needs to be re-stocked before it occurs to him that he could be the one taking a nap, but the thought's there and gone almost before he notices it.

***

Jensen's not exactly happy about crawling out of bed before ten the next morning, especially not when the night before didn't end until close to five, but Sandy says Danneel's heat is one of the first ones, and Jensen figures getting by on a couple of hours of sleep isn't going to kill him.

Sandy brings breakfast--and not just muffins. She chatters on about how the eggs in the quiche are free-range and the vegetables are organic, with Jensen nodding and making encouraging noises but not really listening, not once he's reasonably sure there's nothing even remotely related to Spam--or tofu--in whatever she's feeding him. They get an okay parking spot by the side of the road--not all that close to Ho'okipa, but it won't be too bad of a hike--and sit on the trunk to eat. The breeze is fresh and warm, salty, right off the ocean, and Sandy calls out hellos to everyone she knows who walks by. Jensen's mildly shocked to realize he recognizes at least half of them.

They work their way back to the same spot on the cliff, Sandy all but vibrating with nervous tension.

"She really, really needs this," Sandy says, when Jensen slings an arm around her shoulder and tells her he's afraid she's going to spazz right off the cliff. "I'm always keyed up for Jared's runs, but Dani... she's right on the edge now."

"She's been working her ass off," Jensen says. "Hasn't slacked off at all, not that I can tell." He's not exactly an expert, but Sandy nods anyway.

"I don't think she's going to psych herself out, not this time, but she really needs a good run to start."

Jensen's way too familiar with how easy it is to fuck yourself over, no matter how well prepared you are, but he only says, "Yeah, well, I'm counting on you to keep me up on the details. Staying vertical, I got, but the rest of it is totally lost on me."

The air horn goes off and Sandy tightens her grip on Jensen's arm, digging her nails in hard. Jensen manfully doesn't wince, but he doesn't think it's fair that there's no one to notice but him.

***

Danneel stays vertical the entire heat, and according to Sandy, hits more than enough good stuff to get through to the next round. Sandy drags him back down off the lookout and through the crowds milling around on the beach so they can find Danneel and Sandy can lob off a few I-told-you-sos.

When they get there, Jared's already with Danneel--with the big number pinned to his wetsuit he can cruise around pretty much anywhere he wants. Sandy--barely--lets him finish up with the technical dissection before she launches herself at Danneel. Jensen braces himself for the kind of shrieking that could shatter glass, but instead there's just some massive hugging and a few tears. Followed by the expected I-told-you-sos.

Jensen settles for a quick tug on Danneel's ponytail and extracts a promise that she'll still sit with him at Jeff's even now that she's on her way to the big time. "Keep me safe from all those piranhas out there," Jensen says, grinning at how he can practically see the stress sloughing off her.

He backs off to let her talk to a couple of other competitors and nearly steps on Jeff, coming up behind him.

"Looks like we can stop pretending I'm not gonna need to hire that second waitress," Jeff says.

"God, don't jinx me," Danneel answers. "It's only the first round." Jeff laughs, while Sandy shushes her, launching into the power-of-positive-thinking speech, and there's a small surge and eddy in the crowds moving along the narrow strip of beach. Jensen ends up between Jeff and Jared for a fast few seconds before Jeff gets called over to another group a couple steps away. Jensen is really very proud of himself for not laughing out loud, but he's gonna lose it if he keeps looking at Jeff, so he half-turns toward Jared and says the first thing that pops into his head.

"You two on speaking terms yet? Or do we need to turn Sandy loose on him?"

"We're good," Jared says. "We talked, and I... y'know, I should be doing more of this business shit myself, stop bugging people, so..."

"Really," Jensen says, and he probably shouldn't be surprised that Jeff pussied out of saying what really needed to be said, let Jared jump to the obvious conclusion, but he does have his limits, and he's not even going to try to keep the sarcasm levels down. "You had _that_ conversation, huh?"

"Um, yeah. So, I'll probably come by tonight." Jared blinks, obviously thrown a little but Jeff heard Jensen, too, and that's really what Jensen was after.

"Every night's a party," Jensen says, and then gets himself away from the people who have every right to be celebrating. He can wait for Sandy someplace where he's not tempted to explain the ABCs of deflection to Jared right in Danneel's lap.

Jared's next round is supposed to start in an hour or so; Sandy's staying around to watch. Jensen could hitch a ride back to town--that was the plan--but he ends up walking a little ways down the beach, away from the crowds and just chilling for a while. He's spent more time alone since he's gotten here than in the entire time he was in LA. He supposes he should be thinking deep, meaningful thoughts, or meditating, or something equally worthy, but that's probably a little too much to ask.

He's far enough away that the air horns sometimes get lost in the wind and the surf, but there's no mistaking Jared's headache-inducing sail when he starts out for his heat. There's not time for Jensen to get back up to Sandy's prime position on the cliff, so he watches from down low. He can't see as much from there, but half the people standing around him are either in the competition or sound like they're running it, and he can't help hearing their offhand comments. Most of them expect Jared to take the freestyle category, this being his home beach and all. Jensen thinks about everything Jeff said--and the stuff he didn't say, but Jensen's seen for himself--and has to wonder how Jared's dealing with the weight of those expectations.

Jared waves as he walks back up the beach at the end of his heat; Jensen watches with a critical eye as Jared weaves through crowd, but Jared never fails to stop and smile and say hi, even when Jensen can tell he doesn't know the person he's talking to.

"Hey, man," Jared calls, as soon as he gets close enough. "Thought you were strictly here for the girl-talent, today."

"Figured you'd be more entertaining than watching the inside of my eyelids," Jensen says.

"Dude. You gave up a nap for me?" Jared strikes a pose, hand over his heart. "I'm honored."

"Yeah, well, remember that tonight, when I lose my grip and bitchslap the first idiot who asks for a Surfer on Acid."

"That's what Jeff keeps the baseball bat behind the bar for," Jared says, laughing.

"No," Sandy says, coming up behind Jensen, clipping her phone to the waistband of her shorts. "That's what he thinks he keeps it there for. It's really there so I can dream of beating some sense into him when he's being a pain."

She pecks Jared on the cheek and tells him where he didn't quite hit the mark, but then looks at Jensen to see if he's ready to leave.

"Places to go--"

"People to do," Jared finishes with her.

"Yeah, go on, rub it in," Jensen says. "Some of us don't have anything better to do than head back for a nap." He pretends not to see how closely Jared's watching him; he's at least a good enough actor to fake that. And to pretend he doesn't know that Jeff's around somewhere, too.

Sandy links arms with Jensen as they walk back to the car. "That was... tactful," she says, with a half-smile.

"Too tired for sarcasm," Jensen shrugs. "Plus, y'know, there's not really any good way to announce, _Hey, not fucking_." Especially when he's not supposed to know that Jared gives a damn who Jeff's fucking.

"I swear," Sandy says. "This week's been ten kinds of crazy." She laughs, but it doesn't sound like her usual happy giggle.

"You okay?"

"Sure," Sandy says, too lightly, too quickly. "Just tired."

"If you say so," Jensen answers after a bit, letting her change the subject and fill the rest of the trip back to Steve's with mindless chatter.


	4. Chapter 4

  
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 **\-- 4 --**

 

Jared does come by that night, not that anyone has time to do more than slap a bottle of his Redoak on the bar for him. The weather's picking up off-shore, Jensen gathers, which corresponds to the north shore breaks getting pounded, which sets up some kind of an alert, which means an entirely new set of tourists, the ones who aren't totally into it and haven't been there waiting around already, flooding into town.

"Good Christ," Chris says, elbowing his way up to the bar. Jensen digs out the bottles of water they keep buried in the ice machine and shoves them in Chris's direction along with a bottle of Wild Turkey. If there's one thing he's sure of, it's that Chris and Steve can pour their own shots. "If I wanted this level of crazy, I'd have stayed in LA."

Jensen's saved from having to actually agree with Chris in front of witnesses by the arrival of yet another wave of orders from the floor. Jeff's trading insults with a dozen different guys, barely looking at what he's pouring, but Jensen hasn't seen him miss yet, which is probably a decent talent to nurture when you run a bar.

Jensen hasn't quite gotten to that level of expertise, so he's looking down at the rum going into the glasses he's got lined up on the bar when the shit hits the fan, in the form of Sandy throwing a tray of empties against the door to the kitchen. It's noisy enough in the room that it probably doesn't even register more than 10 feet away, but Jensen's right there on that end of the bar.

"Oh, _hell_ ," Jeff mutters, and Jensen's first thought is that some dick made a grab for her, but then he realizes the only guy near her is Zack or Zeke or whatever the hell his name is, and her fury is clearly focused on him. Jared's on his feet and moving through the crowd, and Jensen can see the start to a serious brawl in his eyes, which suits the crazy energy that's crawling under his own skin. Jensen looks across the bar and smiles at Chris. Chris smiles back and if things don't change soon, Jensen might have to admit he likes the guy.

"We got it," Jensen calls down to Jeff, picking up the Louisville Slugger Jeff really does keep propped against the dishwasher and ducking under the short end.

"I got first dibs on Prince Charming; I've had to listen to him longer," Chris says to Jensen. "You go deal with the kid."

Jensen nods and peels off at an angle that'll let him intercept Jared.

"Not now, Jensen," Jared says. Jensen's pretty sure he's not drunk, but he's not taking his eyes off Sandy and it's crystal clear he's seeing everything through a red haze.

"You," Jensen says, getting right up in Jared's face, "Do _not_ need assault charges filed against you tonight, not with fifty media outlets set up a couple of miles from here with live satellite feeds."

Jared pushes into him, but Jensen's got his feet set and isn't giving an inch. "I'm not gonna do anything stupid--"

"It doesn't _matter_ ," Jensen growls. "You get within ten feet of that ass, and I guarantee he'll file charges." Jared hesitates and Jensen presses him back. "I swear, we'll get him out of here." When Jared opens his mouth, Jensen adds, "And I'm pretty sure Kane isn't going to pass on a chance to raise a little hell, so he'll probably end up with a black eye or two."

Jared holds firm for another couple of seconds, but then finally backs off.

"Okay," Jensen says, taking a deep breath. "Go give Jeff a hand while I take out the trash." Jared doesn't smile, but he lets Jensen shove him in the general direction of where Jeff's pulling beers, at the opposite end of the bar. Jensen watches to make sure he isn't going to double-back and end up undoing everything. Jared's still glaring, but Jensen figures Jeff'll keep him from doing anything too stupid.

Chris has Z-Boy halfway through the kitchen door; Jensen can see a nice shiner starting, which Jensen is betting came from Sandy, if the way Sandy's cradling one hand in the other is any indication. It hasn't shut the jerk up, though. "Sandy, honey, come on. Let's go somewhere more private and I can explain--"

"What's to explain, Zack, _honey_?" Sandy demands, clearly still riding the adrenaline rush of fury. "Also, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm _working_ right now, but I forgot, waiting tables, that's just code for so fucking desperate for someone to take care of me, I won't notice that you never, _ever_ take my calls."

"Married," Chris mutters to Jensen, under the general noise.

"Nice," Jensen drawls. "Boring and unoriginal, too."

"I was too _stupid_ to figure it out before now," Sandy spits out. "But hey, I finally clued in, so _no_ , I _don't_ want to go someplace more private with you, I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to _see_ you."

"And, that's our cue," Jensen says, pointing at Zack with the bat. "Exit, stage left."

"The pretty boy over there? He's an actor," Chris says, dragging Zack the rest of the way into the kitchen. Mike looks up from the grill, but doesn't slow down. "He knows all about exits and entrances."

"Get your fucking hands off me," Zack snarls, but Jensen was right about Chris: he's having a damn good time manhandling the jerk through the kitchen and out the back door with a final push that has him stumbling against the dumpster.

"Look, dickhead," Jensen says, once they're all outside. "The two of us? We're your best friends here. If you want to take your chances with the rest of them, feel free to loop right around and come back in the front door."

"Yeah, go on," Chris says. "That'd be a real good time."

Zack mutters and mumbles, but turns and stomps off.

"Damn," Chris drawls. "I wasn't kidding. That really would have been a good time. "

"Lunatic," Jensen mutters, but there's a spike of adrenaline still in his own blood and Chris's smirk says he knows it.

They catch a few looks from the tourists when they come back into the main room, but nothing major. Jensen doesn't see Sandy, but Jeff has Jared still at the other end of the bar. Chris grabs the water and the Wild Turkey and heads toward the stage; Jensen ducks back under the bar and starts pulling beers, since things are really backing up.

"Lover boy all taken care of?" Jeff asks.

"Yeah," Jensen smirks. "And he broke Kane's heart by not putting up a fuss, so there was no bloodshed."

"Too bad," Jared growls, but Sandy comes up right then with another set of orders and he turns his attention to her. "Sandy, are you sure--"

" _Yes_ ," she snaps, glaring at him, and then Jeff, and then Jensen. "I'm sure. I'm _fine_. I do not want to take a break. I don't want to go home. I'm going to do my job and make my rent, and if you say one word about how you've got that covered, Jared, I will never speak to you again."

Jared nods, but he's got a stubborn glint in his eyes that Sandy's not likely to miss--or appreciate--so Jensen smacks the bar to get her attention and drawls, "If you're here to work, how about dropping the orders and letting the rest of us do our jobs…"

Jeff chokes back a laugh, which earns him a long, thoughtful look from Sandy and a glare from Jared, but she snaps out a list of drinks in a steady, clear voice. Jensen gets to dealing with them, and the night rolls on.

Jensen does his usual set with Steve and Chris, and comes back for one more round, late, when nobody cares how rough they sound, and then helps Jeff start closing down for the night. He's a little surprised--they're still pulling in a lot of orders, Jeff could stay open longer, but then he catches Jeff watching Jared watching Sandy.

"He's not leaving until she does," Jeff mutters. "Idiot."

Sandy hangs in there until it's just them, until Jeff's locked the door before she sits down at the table in the corner and covers her face with both hands.

Jared crosses the room in a couple long strides and scoops her up and she finally breaks down. Jared settles down in the chair with her curled on his lap and Jensen can hear him crooning to her.

"Shit, should we go find Dani?" Jensen murmurs to Steve.

"I think Jared's got it covered," Steve answers. "But..."

"She'd gut us if we went and woke up Danneel tonight," Jeff adds. "She's set for the early group tomorrow morning."

"You guys are total pussies, you know that, right?" Chris rolls his eyes at them. "Just clean the place up so when she comes up for air, she won't have any reason not to get the hell out of here."

Jensen's tempted to ask if it's the blue moon or just sunspots, but for whatever reason, he's agreeing with Chris. Again.

"Fine," Jeff mutters. "Get on it, then."

None of them are particularly up for scrubbing the place down, but if they don't, Jensen knows Sandy will come in early the next morning to take care of it before she goes out to watch Danneel. He's still not really happy about the job, but hell, if Chris can do it, so can he.

He's bone-tired by the time they finish up, though. Jared's spread out across three chairs, Sandy still curled on his lap. Somewhere in the firestorm of tears, her hair came down from her usual ponytail and it's hiding her face. Jensen can see the occasional hitch in her breathing but the real sobs are gone and what Jensen can see of her looks relaxed, maybe asleep.

"She okay?" Jeff keeps his voice low and quiet, and Jared nods, his hand never stopping the slow, soothing strokes up and down her back.

"Think so," Jared murmurs. "This one really did a number on her, though. Married, two kids, and--"

"Bored," Sandy says into Jared's shirt. "Coming down from up-country to find a little surf-betty to play with." She shakes her head as she looks up at Jeff. "Hi, I'm Sandy, and sometimes I check my brain at the door." Jared _tsks_ at her, but she rubs her eyes and slides off his lap. "I'm fine, Jay. At least I'm not the one married to the cheating son of a bitch."

Her voice is steady, but when Jeff gives her a hug, she clings to him, longer and tighter than she usually would and she sniffles a little when she pulls away. "Okay, stop being sweet to me, before I start crying again."

"You earned it, Sandy-girl," Jeff says. "That was a nice right cross you laid on him."

She holds her hand out so he can see the bruised and swollen knuckles. "You never told me it would hurt _me_."

Jeff laughs. "Put some ice on it and wear it like a trophy, girl."

Sandy smiles at him and turns back to Jared. "I'm going to go to the bathroom and not look in the mirror while I wash my hands, because I do _not_ want to see what my face looks like after all that crying, and then I'd really appreciate it if you'd take me home so I can go to bed and this day can finally be over."

"You got it, sweetheart," Jared says, sitting up to press a kiss to her forehead as she slides past him. "Fuck," he adds, once she's gone.

"She leads with her heart," Jeff says, reaching for the bottle of rum.

"I know, it's just..."

"Yep." Jeff pours with a deliberate hand, three fingers for the rest of them and a shot glass for Jared. "Some of us don't have to be on our best game tomorrow," Jeff says, when Jared opens his mouth to complain.

"Fine," Jared mutters, and Jensen deliberately doesn't look at anyone, so he won't lose the battle to keep a straight face. Seriously, he thinks. Who does Jeff even think he's kidding?

Sandy comes out, twisting her hair back through itself in a messy knot, rolling her eyes when Jared grabs her backpack from her. She lets him take it, but looks straight at Jeff and says, "Okay, you know what? I'm way too tired to be subtle or tactful--" she shoots Steve a pointed glare when he can't quite choke back the snicker, but then goes right back to staring Jeff down. "Are you going to go watch everyone tomorrow? Because if you are, stop pretending like you're not, and just come out with Jensen and me in the morning."

Jeff turns a little red under his tan, and he pays way more attention to pouring the next round than he needs to. "I'll be around," he says, finally. "Probably best if I drive out myself, though."

Sandy snorts, but lets it go, and doesn't resist when Jared starts steering her toward the door. "I'll come get you," she says to Jensen. "We can see how many people feel the need to find me and tell me they knew he was married all along."

"And here I didn't think there was an ounce of snark in there." Jensen laughs. "Wouldn't miss it. We can run an over/under on it."

"Out," Jeff growls, mostly at Jared and Sandy, but the rest of them get moving, too. Jensen sprawls out in the back seat, willing himself to keep awake for all of the three-minute ride to Steve's.

"Shit," Chris says, as they haul all the amps and shit into the house and dump them by the front door. "Long fucking day."

"What the cowboy said," Jensen says, leaning against the wall and debating if it'd really be worth it to make it to his bedroom. At the moment, the couch is looking damn good. "When you kept telling me I should visit, I wasn't thinking I'd be scrubbing down a bar every goddamned night."

"Yeah," Steve says, smiling. "I didn't really expect that either." He leans against the wall next to Jensen and shakes his head. "Hell--I didn't expect any of this, starting with you ever coming, much less.... "

Even in the dim light from the single, low-watt bulb they leave on in the kitchen, Jensen can see how serious his eyes are. "Much less, what?" Jensen asks.

"You _being_ here," Steve says, finally. "Settled in."

"I'm not--"

"Yeah, you are," Steve says, right before he fits his hand on Jensen's jaw and draws him into a kiss that's long and slow and so damn _right_ Jensen can't help kissing him back, even with Chris right there.

"Steve--" The words are sticking hard in Jensen's throat, but it doesn't matter, because Chris interrupts him before he can even start.

"Your call, Jensen." It's one of the only times Chris has ever called him that--not Hollywood or Jenny or prettyboy, but Jensen; it's one more thing that's tilting the real world out from under him.

Steve's eyes are still serious, pupils big and dark in the lighter iris, and his hand's still cupping Jensen's head. It's all Jensen can do not to turn his face into the familiar touch, feel the way the calluses from years with a guitar will catch on his skin. Somewhere in there, Chris has stepped up close, not touching, not crowding, but close enough that Jensen can feel the heat from his body.

"What is this?" Jensen makes himself stay still, wills his brain to focus. "Tag team?"

"You mean, did we write out who says what, when?" Chris asks. "Because that's a little too structured for Carlson. But, yeah, we've talked about it. Been thinking about it for a long time."

"No pressure," Steve says, and Jensen wonders just how freaked out he looks. Because he sure as _hell_ never saw this coming and there's a part of him--a really big part--that's screaming at him to _move_ , to take it, take _Steve_ , but the rest of him doesn't trust that part, at least not right now, in the middle of the night.

"I--don't know." Jensen closes his eyes, so he doesn't have to see himself do it. He manages to take a step back, and then another, but when he opens his eyes, Steve's still right there--Chris, too--and all Jensen knows is that he somehow said the literal truth. He doesn't know anything. He shakes his head, as if that's going to help, and says, "What do you want from me?"

"Whatever you want to give." Steve doesn't smile, at least, not until Jensen rolls his eyes, because really, did he expect Steve to say anything _but_ that?

"Open offer," Chris adds, and there it is again, Chris with no smirk, no smart-ass crack, looking at Jensen not quite the way he looks at Steve, but close enough that Jensen can't not take him seriously.

"What do you get out of this, Kane?" Jensen's mouth is moving before he thinks about it; that's no surprise.

"You're kidding, right?" Chris runs his eyes over Jensen, and his smile is as sharp and hungry as his look.

"No, I'm really not," Jensen says. "I mean, what? You didn't get to go at it earlier, so this is a good substitute for raising a little hell?"

"If that makes it easier for you," Chris says. He's back to the smirk, but there's nothing mocking in his eyes, and that's where Jensen focuses when he takes that first step toward them. Chris's grin slides into something easy and appreciative and when Jensen flicks a glance at Steve, he sees the same expression mirrored in Steve's eyes.

He can do this, Jensen tells himself, leaning in to find Chris's mouth with his own. He's far enough away from where he was when he got here, _who_ he was, to deal with the difference between what he thought he was getting then, and whatever it is he's being offered now.

Chris meets Jensen halfway, focused and intent, kissing Jensen like there's no one else in the room even while Steve's hands slide up under Jensen's shirt, long, slow strokes along his spine that settle him at the same time they hint at so much more. He edges Jensen's shirt up with his hands, pressing close, the worn cotton of his own shirt soft against Jensen's skin.

"Christian," Steve murmurs. "Stop for a sec, let me…" Chris shifts his attention from Jensen's mouth to working his way along and under Jensen's jaw, backing off just enough that Steve can drag Jensen's t-shirt up and over his head. Jensen hisses as Chris's teeth close over his collarbone, not quite enough to break the skin, but fucking _perfect_ , like Chris knows how that jolt of pleasurepain goes straight to Jensen's dick.

Jensen gets his fingers twisted into Chris's hair, pulling hard until Chris looks up, grinning. "Bed," Jensen says, licking back into Chris's mouth, and then groaning as Steve presses close and bites a line of kisses across the top of Jensen's back. For every bit of progress they make toward the bedroom, another piece of clothing hits the floor: Steve's shirt in the hall, and Chris's jeans at the bedroom door, and Jensen's twisting around to get at Steve's cargoes, his fingers not quite working right because of Chris's hands moving low in on his belly, quick, impatient jerks at the waistband undoing the snap and sliding underneath.

"God, yeah," Steve whispers, watching as Chris wraps his hand around Jensen's dick and starts jerking him, slow and nasty.

"Don't stop," Chris growls, his mouth right against Jensen's ear. "Let me see you get him naked." Jensen doesn't stop, but Steve finally has to help, because there's no way Jensen can deal with a button fly while Chris's mouth is running nonstop, _fuck, yeah, want to see the two of you, so fucking gorgeous_ , much less while Chris is working him with both hands.

"Fuck," Jensen chokes out, dragging air into his lungs like he's been held down by an endless cycle of waves. "Does he ever shut up?"

Steve grins, and, _fuck_ , slides his hands down to join Chris's, and Jensen honestly doesn't care that his knees are about to go. "Sometimes," Steve says, leaning in to bite at the same spot on Jensen's collarbone. "Occasionally."

"If you make it worth my while," Chris says, trying for smug--and mostly getting there--but just hoarse enough that Jensen isn't buying it. He wants to answer, has a snappy comeback all planned, but then Steve's mouthing over where he--where he and Chris both, _Christ_ \--have marked Jensen, and it's all Jensen can do to not give up right there and start begging for it. Chris is still jacking him, one rough stroke after another, slow and deliberate, like Chris is telling him that it's just the start, and when Jensen makes himself open his eyes, Steve is back to watching, his eyes dark and possessive in a way Jensen doesn't ever remember seeing before.

"God, that's--I could watch that all night," Steve says.

"Fuck, yeah," Chris agrees, adding a wicked twist at the top of every stroke, and Jensen chokes back the whine that's caught in his throat. He can't help shuddering, though, and Chris laughs, soft breath of air against Jensen's neck. "I think it's unanimous; get us to a bed, man."

"Yeah," Steve breathes. "Yeah."

Chris hisses once, scraping his back on the doorframe as they go through at an awkward angle, but they're close enough then that their combined momentum carries them along until they can fall onto the bed. The windows are cracked open, and the never-ending Maui wind plays cool and fresh on Jensen's skin where Steve and Chris aren't, a constantly shifting pattern of sensation. It's darker in the bedroom, especially at first, until his eyes adjust to the light, but Jensen never doubts who it is kissing him, or who he's touching and tasting in return.

Steve remembers everything, knows exactly where and how hard to touch to make Jensen twist, exactly where a kiss will make him shake, but Chris figures things out in a flash, things Jensen's doesn't think anyone else even knows.

Chris never stops running his mouth, _Yeah, like that, show me how much you want it, let him see you work for it, no, don't stop those noises, so fucking hot between us_. Steve presses close, whispering Jensen's name over and over, voice easing low and sweet under Chris's, thighs and bellies and dicks slick with sweat and pre-come, touching, sliding against each other, until Jensen doesn't know anything else, can't know anything else.

He knows it's Chris who fingers him open, slick, cool pressure sliding into him, warming little by little as Chris fucks in and out, two fingers, then three, enough that Jensen groans at the stretch and burn, knows it's Steve who's holding him steady, fingers biting into Jensen's hips hard enough to leave marks.

Chris pushes into him slow and deep, fucks him like there's nothing else in the world; Steve breathes with him, licks into his mouth and steals it for his own, tells him he's gorgeous, teases him with slick fingers on his dick, his balls. Jensen gets a hand up, tangles it in Steve's hair and lets himself go where they're taking him, too far out of his head to care that the high, needy whine he hears is coming from his own throat.

"So good," Steve murmurs against Jensen's skin. "So good, so fucking beautiful like this."

Chris settles into a rhythm, still not as fast as Jensen wants, needs, but steady and hard, rocking Jensen into Steve with every thrust, dicks sliding together, slick and hot, enough friction to make Jensen crazy, not ever enough to let him come. Steve lets it spin out until Jensen can barely remember how to breathe before he wraps his hand around both their cocks, stripping them rough and fast, sweet aching pressure building low in Jensen's gut.

"Do it," Chris growls, and Steve drags his nails up and over the head of Jensen's dick, a bright, sparking path that hurts like hell and sends Jensen's every nerve screaming into overdrive, again and again, no breaks in between for Jensen to think or breathe or even _be_ , everything about him shattering out in a million tiny pieces that he knows he's never going to put together again in the same way.

***

It's light when Jensen's phone rings--and rings, and rings, because he can't find it on the bedside table, because there _isn't_ a bedside table, at least not where he's used to there being one… Because he's not in his room, he's in Steve's room, in Steve's bed, still tangled up with Steve and Chris, which is more than enough to scramble the few brain cells he generally has functioning in the morning anyway.

"Somebody answer the fucking thing," Chris mumbles, all but crawling under the pillow he and Jensen have been fighting over all night. Steve just groans and flails around with the arm he doesn't have thrown over Jensen, until he manages to grab Jensen's cargoes from where they fell on the floor when he'd stripped them off Jensen the night before.

The phone stops ringing for a second, but then starts right back up again, like whoever's calling knows there's no fucking way Jensen's going to check messages at whatever-the-hell time it is. Jensen snatches the shorts out of Steve's hand, and manages to flip the damn phone open.

" _Thank_ you," Chris snarls. "Christ."

Jensen grunts into the phone; Sandy's voice comes back at him, and if she's not exactly in top form, she's still about a thousand times too goddamn cheerful for the morning. "I'm on my way down from Jared's. Fifteen minutes, tops. If you're not waiting for me, I'm coming in to get you."

Jensen tries to say something about it having been a long night, but it comes out little more than a high-pitched whine and the phone goes dead anyway. He flops back down and considers not moving.

"Your call," Steve says, obviously way too awake if he's reading Jensen's mind. "But she's got our spare key."

"Hell," Jensen groans, crawling out from under the sheet and over Chris.

"Not dug in here, my ass," Chris says. Jensen pretends not to hear him.

The shower helps, some, and when he stumbles down the hall, Sandy's already sitting on the bar, with giant travel mug that proves to be full of Jeff's double-strength Kona. She hands it over wordlessly, and Jensen could kiss her, except for how it's all her fault he's standing here way too fucking early in the morning, his hair dripping into the collar of his t-shirt and an empty space waiting for him in bed, even if it is between Steve and Chris.

He'd ask why they have to be leaving so goddamned early, but as soon as they get back out on Hana Highway, he gets it: tons of traffic already and it'll only get worse as the day goes on. He'd like some recognition for not whining, but given the shitty night Sandy had, he doesn't think he should count on it.

Jensen catches Sandy watching him out of the corner of her eye, but it takes nearly the whole cup of coffee before his brain's working well enough to for him to say, "What? I put my shirt on inside out?"

Sandy smiles. "No," she says, shaking her head. "But a turtleneck probably wouldn't have been a bad idea." Jensen's about to tell her she's not making sense--why on God's green earth would he want to wear a turtleneck on Maui--when she reaches over and touches his collarbone, right where Steve and Chris had decided they had a fetish the night before.

"Damn it," Jensen says, blushing harder than he has for years. "Watch the road, woman." Sandy laughs, but she drops her hand and turns back to negotiating the traffic. "You should be careful not to hang out with Morgan so much," Jensen grumbles. "You already have that fucking evil smirk of his; it'd be a shame if you ended up with the rest of his ugly mug."

He could say more, but Sandy's going off-road to get around the line of cars backed out onto the highway as people-- _idiots_ , fucking tourists--can't fucking pay attention to the LOT FULL signs and insist on trying to pull into the parking lot at Ho'okipa.

"See?" Jensen yells. "You're driving like him, too!"

Sandy flips him off--which has Jensen yelling, "Hands! Hands!" and all but grabbing for the steering wheel--and somehow manages to cross back over the road and snag a reasonable place to leave the car on the other side of the park.

"Everybody wants to be down on the beach," she says, pulling a daypack out of the back seat and handing it to Jensen. "Come on, before they figure out they can't see shit down there and try to get up on the lookout."

"Yes, ma'am," Jensen mutters, but since it's his own damn fault for agreeing to this whole thing, and since she's right, and since if he's going to be here, he might as well be somewhere that he can actually see what's going on, he follows along obediently. Plus, he has a feeling that if they don't get cliffside, he's going to end up with Sandy on his shoulders so she can see, and yeah. No.

Sandy moves fast, but Jensen's right there with her, and they manage to get a pretty decent spot staked out, a little further away than they've been before, but still good enough. Sandy's got all kinds of stuff in the daypack: sun block, and more coffee, and water, and a ton of stuff to eat--none of it healthy or organic in any way, shape, or form.

"I feel like the useless appendage, here," Jensen says, looking at all the crap.

"Oh, no," Sandy says, pulling her hair back into a ponytail before the wind whips it into a frenzy. "You're vitally important--I'm gonna be here all day and somebody needs to save my spot when I have to go pee."

"I'm honored," Jensen says, dryly.

"I'm sorry," Sandy sighs. "That... didn't come out right. I just..."

"I'm fine," Jensen says, laughing a little. "Trust me, that's not even close to the worst thing someone's said about me, even without having had a craptastic night." Sandy shrugs a little, and Jensen tucks a bit of hair that she missed back behind her ear. "How's it going?"

"Is it stupid to wish I'd kept my mouth shut for another day, so I wouldn't have to sit here and pretend I'm fine?"

"Nah," Jensen says. "But you'd have been sitting here pretending anyway, so at least this way you're a step closer to being done with it all."

"He was supposed to be _different_ ," Sandy says, staring off at the ocean and sky. "He wasn't a flake who was going to go find himself on some feral surf trip. He had a _job_ ; he wasn't always asking me for money or not calling me because his phone got turned off."

"It works like that sometimes. I wish it didn't." Jensen shifts the backpack around and gets settled. "If you want to zone out, I'll make sure nobody steps on you."

Sandy nods and curls up, her head on the backpack. When she takes her sunglasses off to get more comfortable, Jensen can see her eyes are still puffy and red.

"Thanks for coming up here with me," she says.

"Thanks for asking me," Jensen answers, watching the ocean and finally admitting that not thinking about the night before is probably not going to happen, and that he should probably start by admitting that he's less freaked about what had actually happened than he is about the _way_ it happened. Somehow, he thought the night was going to be about him and Chris sharing Steve, rather than the way things went down.

Even then, he'd thought getting fucked by Chris was going to be easier--no ghosts, no memories, no used-to-be--but he guessed he'd missed the part about how that meant Steve was going to be seeing everything, even the stuff Jensen's been hiding from himself.

***

"Third is good, right?" Jensen is grateful he's never had claustrophobic tendencies, because having to fight their way to the competitor's area down on the beach is like swimming upstream against the lemmings. "If we ever fucking get there, I don't want to open my mouth and say the wrong thing to Dani."

"No, third is great," Sandy says. "I mean, Jared would be moping for a week, so it's good he won, but Dani was working on cracking the top ten, so third is so awesome, I can't even tell you."

"So if I grab her and spin her around until she throws up...?"

"That'd be perfect," Sandy says, with an almost-normal smile.

***

"Please tell me this is it," Jensen says, looking out at the crowd that's already packed into Jeff's place, all of Jared's crew and Danneel's, and half the Kaanapali coast, it looks like, and he doesn't begrudge them the party, but it's not even five and Steve's already working on a second round of kegs for the on-tap beers. "They all go home tomorrow?"

"Most of them," Jeff says, throwing a bag of trash into the back hallway. "The ones who are hanging around for the good shit up at Pe'ahi will still be around, but that's a whole different vibe."

"Thank fucking god," Jensen mutters. "Let's hope we make it through the night." Sandy's got one friend, Joanna, working, and the two of them are calling everyone they know, trying to get extra help, but Jensen isn't counting on it.

Jared's fighting his way through the crowd, his face flushed and his hair even more out of control than usual, getting stopped every step by someone who wants to shake hands or hug or tell him what he should be doing next. Jensen fills three orders before Jared makes it the last two feet.

"Holy shit," Jared says, laughing and just climbing over the bar. Jensen makes flapping motions to get him away from where all the glasses are and keeps filling orders. "This is nuts."

"Crazier than all the other times you've won?"

"Never won at home before," Jared says, grinning even bigger. Jensen hands him a beer and high-fives him. "Hey, Jeff--tell Sandy and Joanna I got this tonight. Run a tab and let me know."

"Ooooo," Jensen says. "Big man."

"Name me a better reason to party," Jared says, and Jensen can't help but laugh, because the kid is practically glowing.

"Hell, no," Jeff says, and Jensen's impressed at how fast the friendly, slightly crazed atmosphere behind the bar goes freezing.

"Come on, man." Jared keeps his voice even, but his hand tightens so hard around the beer he's holding that Jensen can see his knuckles go white. "It's a private party, no big deal."

"Ten seconds after Sandy opens her mouth to tell someone it's on the house and every deadbeat on the island'll be in here."

"I doubt they'll make it in the door," Jared says, gesturing out at the packed room. "And even if they did, it's no big deal."

"Your suits okay with this, Jay?" Jeff turns around and makes a show of looking. "Because I can't say as they're doing you any favors if they are."

"I'm not seeing where that's any of your business," Jared bites out.

"No," Jeff says, in an even more bull-headed tone. "I don't guess it is." He turns away and calls to Sandy, telling her to fill Joanna in. "What?" he asks, when Jared's still there after.

"I got this," Jared says, quietly. "I know you've seen guys blow it all, but I'm good, I _swear_."

"Like you said, none of my business."

"Make up your fucking mind," Jared says, low and furious. Jensen takes a step back--all he can do in the cramped space behind the bar, but he doesn't think either Jared or Jeff is noticing anything but the other. "I ask you, and it's the biggest fucking imposition ever. I don't ask you, and you can't wait to tell me what a stupid fucking _kid_ I am."

"Jared--"

"You know, just forget it." Jared rubs one big hand over his face. "I'm happy to throw some business your way, and I'll be gone next week. Sorry to bother you; it won't happen again."

Jeff grabs for Jared as he goes to duck under the short side of the bar and for a second, Jensen thinks Jared's going to turn around and start swinging. He catches Sandy's eyes across the bar; she looks about as exasperated as he's ever seen her, so at least it's not just him who wants to knock some heads together.

" _Jay_ ," Jeff says, and something--maybe something in his voice--stops Jared's hand. "Do we have to do this here?"

"Do what?" Jared asks. "This--It's the same thing we always do. Nothing changes."

"I didn't--" Jeff stops, and swallows hard. "Why would you want it to change?"

Jared laughs, short and sharp, nothing at all like his real laugh, the one that can take down an entire room even if nobody has a clue what's so funny. "You really aren't kidding, are you?" He shakes his head once, like he's trying to talk himself out of something, but then shrugs. "Because I've been in love with you since before I knew what that even _meant_."

"I know that," Jeff says, his voice as rough as Jensen's ever heard it. "Doesn't mean you should settle--"

"Oh, _fuck_ that," Jared snaps, but he's not totally out of control. Jensen doesn't think anyone on the other side of the bar can hear him. "You don't want me, fine, but don't give me that crap."

"It's not crap--"

"Right," Jared says. "Tell me again how this isn't the same shit we always do?"

"I would," Jeff growls. "But you can't keep that mouth shut long enough for me to get a sentence out." Jared stays quiet; Jensen would kill to see the expression on his face, but he keeps his back turned and pretends he can't hear a thing.

"It's not nothing," Jeff says, finally. "You don't need to be tied down to a dive like this--not to mention all the exes who'll cross the street to deck me when they see me--not when you've got everything breaking your way."

"No," Jared says. "I don't _need_ to be--" Jeff starts to interrupt, and Jared talks right over him. "I _want_ to be. And you can tell me I shouldn't want it, but that's just BS. If you don't want me, tell me, and I'll get over it, but shut _up_ about what I do or don't need, because I am sick of that dodge."

Sandy covers her mouth, but her eyes are dancing as she loads up her tray. Jensen's way behind on orders, but the entertainment value is outstanding, so she's not fussing at him.

"Fucking hell, Jared," Jeff sighs. "What do you want me to say?"

"The truth."

"You already know the truth."

"No," Jared says, so quietly Jensen almost misses it. "I know what I want it to be, but I really don't know."

"Yeah," Jeff says. "You do."

"You really," Jared laughs again, still not his regular laugh, and just as raw as before but there's something so hopeful in it that Jensen can't breathe for a second. "You really aren't going to say it, are you?"

"Not standing in the middle of a crowd of drunk tourists, I'm not," Jeff says.

"If I come back later, are you gonna bail on me?"

"No," Jeff says, and Jensen catches sight of Jared's smile as he ducks under the bar and heads back to his table. To be honest, they're probably catching sight of Jared's smile three islands over, but Jensen and Sandy are the only ones who know what it's really about.

Jeff comes back up to the bar; Jensen gets one look at his face and reaches for the rum. "Easy there, big guy."

"Fuck," Jeff mutters, downing the double-shot Jensen pours in one gulp. "'M okay, I just... fuck."

"Here." Jensen hands over fistfuls of beer mugs. "Pull some drafts and breathe for a while. Sandy'll take my head off if I come up empty the next time she's back here."

"Wouldn't be behind if you hadn't spent the last ten minutes eavesdropping."

"Some things are just worth risking Employee of the Week for. It's too damn bad I didn't have a recorder going," Jensen says, setting up a line of shooters and nodding out to where Danneel's having way too much fun deciding which of the Pro-Fun boys she's taking home later. "Dani's gonna be all annoyed that she missed your little scene."

"You could do a dramatic re-enactment," Sandy says, coming up just in time to hear the end.

"Oh, excellent idea," Jensen purrs. "I can do the voices and everything."

"Sweet Jesus, shut _up_ ," Jeff says, trying for a growl and missing by a mile.

***

The shower at the house isn't big enough for two, but Jensen's not going to say no when Chris crowds in on top of him. Or when Steve joins them a couple of minutes later. They're not going to kill themselves making out in there and nothing much else is likely to be happening, not with how worn down they all are.

"Some fucking paradise," Chris mumbles as they stagger out of the bathroom, Steve's arm slung around Jensen's neck as though the last year hasn't happened at all. "Christ, I feel like I went ten rounds with Tyson."

"Not paradise." Steve doesn't let go when Jensen starts off down the hall to the lanai. "Reality."

Jensen stops, and he really wants to ask what exactly is going on, but Chris pushes up against him and Steve, shoving them both toward the bedroom.

"If you say so." Chris yawns and pushes harder, until Jensen gives up and just goes with it.

"Yeah," Steve says softly, when they're settled in the bed, Chris still stealing the fucking pillow. "I do."

***

Steve doesn't do anything but slap the alarm off the next morning, so when Jensen finally wakes up on his own there are still three of them in bed, same as there had been in the shower, except it's day now and there's no place to hide with the sun streaming in through the half-closed blinds.

Jensen slides off the edge of the bed and finds some clothes. He could use some coffee, but Chris has his own system and Jensen doesn't want to mess with it. He ends up sitting on the steps in front of the house. It's quiet; the neighbors have all left for work and there's just the faintest hum from cars going by out on the highway. The house behind him is small and ordinary; the concrete he's sitting on is crumbling along the edges.

There's nothing that says he's anyplace special, so he's not sure why he thought the regular rules didn't apply. Fucking around with Steve and Chris is one thing, but that wasn't what had happened the night before.

"Bro, stop thinking so hard," Steve says, from behind him. "I can hear the gears grinding from inside."

Steve's leaning against the doorway, tan and blond, wearing nothing but jeans and a thin leather cord around his wrist and Jensen's right back to walking into the house that first day. The only difference is that he'd been a hell of a lot more practiced at keeping shit off his face then.

Steve turns his head and calls back, "Don't drink the whole damn thing yourself," as he rolls off the side of the doorframe and takes the two steps to get to Jensen. "Shift over," he says, dropping down to sit on the steps. His shoulder brushes Jensen's, warm, dry skin roughened in places by the scratches and cuts he's picked up in the mornings.

"How's this gonna work?" Jensen doesn't look at him, as though not-looking now is going to erase everything he knows Steve saw ten seconds ago. "Real world. Not whatever fantasy we've been floating along in."

"I don't know," Steve says. "I just know I want it to."

"Wait," Jensen says, looking up, surprised enough to forget about keeping any kind of distance. "That's not your line. See, I say something like that, and you say it's all good, however things work out."

Chris laughs from just inside the door, juggling three mugs.

"Yeah, well." Steve shrugs. "That's all I've got, today."

Jensen takes the mug Chris holds out to him and lets what Steve said settle a bit. "So, what...? We just close our eyes and make a wish?"

"Hold hands and sing _Kumbaya_?" Chris offers.

"Thanks, Kane," Jensen snaps. "That was helpful."

"Hey, Carlson basically says _I got nothin'_ and it's okay. I offer entertainment value for your freak-out and I get snark. I think I'm detecting a theme here."

Jensen rolls his eyes, but it doesn't escape him that Chris isn't blowing off the idea.

"You're here for the duration," Jensen finally says, to Steve. "You come and go." Chris nods. "That leaves me and fuck if I know what I do."

"Yeah, see, that'd be where you're dancing around shit you already know," Chris says. "Again."

"Maybe," Jensen sighs.

Chris snorts and taps Jensen on the top of the head. "'M goin' back to bed. Maybe you two could actually talk, y'know, instead of just sayin' words at each other."

He doesn't slam the door behind him, but it's close.

"Hell," Steve says, and Jensen agrees. Granted, he's only known the guy for a couple of months, but he's got a feeling it doesn't get much more ironic than Christian Kane telling you to talk.

"It doesn't matter," Steve says, unexpectedly. "What you said earlier--you don't know where you are, what you're doing." He leans back on both arms and tilts his face up to look at Jensen. "It doesn't matter. Not to me, and not to Chris."

"It matters to me," Jensen answers, and Steve nods.

"I know," Steve says, simple statement of fact. "I don't know that I got that, when I left, but... It--I had a lot of time to think about it, before you came."

"I'm not trying to jerk you around." Jensen looks at the smudgy green of Haleakala in the distance. "I just don't know." Steve doesn't say anything, but he doesn't leave either and when he finishes his coffee, Jensen takes the empty mug and pushes it out of the way so he can lean in and kiss him in the breezy quiet.

***

Jensen could go crash for a while once Steve leaves, thinks about it for a couple of minutes, but even as tired as he is, he's got a feeling he's not going to sleep. Plus, picking a bed seems like making a statement, one he's not ready for. In the end, he figures he can eat something and if he falls asleep on the couch, well, that'll mean he really was tired enough to ignore the stuff running around in his head.

Chris comes in while Jensen's trying to decide between heating up whatever's in the shelf full of takeout boxes or going all out and scrambling eggs.

"That's stuff Sandy's trying out," Chris says. "Good, but..."

"High chance of stealth tofu," Jensen finishes, putting it back in the fridge. "Eggs?"

"Only if I'm making them."

Jensen could be offended, but then again, he could just hand over the frying pan and get fed.

He ends up on the couch, his feet up and the last of the coffee cradled in his lap, watching Chris do his thing with the usual bitching and moaning. It's the standard refrain of the kitchen being a fucking museum piece--which it is--and the stove having only two settings, char and off--again, true--but since it comes with eggs scrambled with onions and peppers and tomatoes and dumped out onto the plates at the exact right second of doneness, as opposed to his own version of you're-lucky-if-they're-not-crispy-shut-up-and-eat, Jensen's okay with letting it all wash over him, especially since it tends to end once there's actual food to be eaten.

"You're here, Steve's down at Jeff's…" Chris says, dropping his plate into the sink with a clatter. " I'm guessing nothing got decided."

"We talked." Jensen shrugs. "More than you and I've talked, anyway."

"You and me, we're not the issue." Chris turns away and starts fiddling with the remains of the peppers and onions.

"Yeah? Why's that?" Jensen drags himself up off the couch and crosses the ten feet over to the edge of the bar. Chris shoots him a look that says he doesn't exactly appreciate being blocked in the tiny kitchen, but since that was the point, Jensen ignores it. "Seriously. I'm not allowed to want you, too?"

"Makes things a hell of a lot less complicated if you don't."

"Dude," Jensen laughs. "I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I think we're a little too late for that."

"Look," Chris says. "The two of us just have to tolerate each other. You and Steve? You two still haven't gotten through the part where he walked and you stopped talking to him, let alone the part with me or the stuff with Jeff."

"We're working on it," Jensen says. "Doesn't mean you get a free pass on the figuring things out part."

"Your mama never taught you to share?"

"Just that easy?" Jensen asks.

"Hell, no," Chris says. "But… You got a better idea, now's the time to put your cards on the table." He looks at Jensen, and for the first time, Jensen sees a hint of uncertainty in his eyes.

Jensen sighs. "I'm just going on the record right now as to how this wasn't my idea in the first place."

"Yeah, well, somebody's gotta think of the big picture."

"And that's what, exactly?"

"That this wasn't some spur of the moment thing he just threw out there," Chris says. "First time you sang with us--you remember?"

"Yeah," Jensen says, quietly. "I remember."

"Everything kinda went sideways after that. Maybe we all would've ended up fucking around no matter what, but that's not how he went into it." Chris gets quiet for a couple of seconds, before he finishes with, "Me either."

"Then it's probably good it took this long to happen," Jensen says. "We're in a better headspace now."

"Or, y'know, we're plain crazy from start to finish."

"You're just now figuring _that_ out?" Jensen says, and Chris smiles for real.

***

Jensen does, in fact, crash out on the couch for most of the afternoon. He swims up toward consciousness a couple of times, thinking vaguely about moving, but never quite waking enough to follow through. He knows Chris is in and out, and at one point he hears Steve's voice, but mostly he's just out cold, no dreams, nothing nagging at his subconscious. It's dark when he wakes for real. His back isn't too happy with him, and his eyes are dry from sleeping in his contacts, but it's nothing that a shower and his glasses can't fix.

Jared's back at the corner table when Jensen finally manages to wander down to the cafe, Jeff's coffee and a pack of cigarettes on the table next to his own beer, nothing changed on the surface. Jeff's shooting the breeze with a couple of guys Jensen recognizes from around town, so Jensen grabs a bottle of water out of the ice and drops down next to Jared.

"He bail?" Jensen can't actually see Jared still being on the island if that had happened, but he figures it'd be rude not to ask.

"Nah," Jared drawls, cat-eating-the-canary smug dissolving into another smile they can probably see on the mainland. "He really really didn't."

"Excellent."

"Yeah, except for the part where I'm out of here for Australia next Monday, at the latest." Jared picks at the label on his beer. "It figures we'd get things sorted out right in the middle of the season."

"You're not planning on skipping out on the tour or anything, right?" Jensen eyes Jared. "'Cause if you are, let the rest of us know so we can be out of the blast radius when Jeff finds out."

"Fuck," Jared sighs. "I should record this, I've said it so many times. I'm not going to fuck things up. It's only a couple of months and I'm not pulling out of anything." He looks up at Jensen. "Trust me, I grew up around here, watched all the guys who've screwed themselves over come in and out, talking about how they could have been big. And all the guys who _are_ big, talking about how they've fucked over everyone around them."

"Tightrope, huh?"

"Yeah." Jared quits playing with his beer and tilts it back to finish it off. "I just wish I didn't have to skip town quite so fast, that's all. It's not the end of the world or anything."

Jensen catches Jeff's attention, cocks an eyebrow to see if he needs any help behind the bar, but he'd been right the night before. It's not just locals now--there are still a fair number of unfamiliar faces--but the vibe is completely different.

Steve's voice is rough, and Chris's isn't much better, but that kind of fits the scene, too. Jensen still has a thing for Steve's voice; after everything, maybe it's time to admit that's not going away. Sandy flits by occasionally, and Jeff wanders over more often than he usually does, and doesn't seem to notice how he always ends up with a hand on Jared.

"Radar says there's a mother of a storm brewing up," Jeff says. "One, two days out."

"Jaws?" Jared smiles. "Hell, yeah."

"Maniac," Jeff mutters.

"Like you wouldn't be out there if your knee could take it," Jared says. "But it'll shred Hook, too." Jared's smile gets even bigger as he reaches for his phone. "Awesome send-off." He gets up to go outside to call and leaves Jensen alone with Jeff.

"This is where I give you the 'looking good' pep talk, right?" Jensen smirks. "Or should I just start pouring the rum?"

Jeff growls something under his breath, but it's definitely for show.

"He's not real happy about leaving," Jensen continues. "Your timing really sucks, man."

"Seeing as how this wasn't ever supposed to happen, period, I'm guessing we'll deal," Jeff says, shaking his head like he's still not sure how he's ended up here. Jensen thinks about explaining Jared and stubborn in words of one syllable or less, but if Jeff hasn't figured that out, Jensen's not about to kill off a rich and valuable source of entertainment. "I'm not real happy about it either," Jeff mutters.

"Go with him," Jensen suggests. "You'll make a fetching boy-toy."

Jeff shoots him a dirty look, but all he says is, "Too much shit here to take care of."

"Steve--"

"--knows a lot, a hell of a lot, but he hasn't been around for that long." Jeff shrugs. "I've always been a one-man show; it's not Steve's gig."

"It doesn't have to be a one-man show," Jensen hears himself saying. He waits for that familiar voice in his head to start screaming at him to shut the fuck up, but there's nothing but quiet.

"What doesn't have to be a one-man show?" Steve asks, walking up behind Jensen and reaching over to steal his water. Jeff quirks an eyebrow at Jensen, but doesn't say anything.

"You," Jensen says. "Running the empire for a couple of weeks."

"Sandy's got too much on her plate--" Jeff starts.

"Which she would rearrange in a heartbeat," Sandy says, on her way past the table to the bar. "And you know it."

"I wasn't actually talking about Sandy," Jensen says. Steve goes still against him, like he knows what Jensen's going to say. "I can handle the bar and stuff--"

"Jen," Steve interrupts. "You don't have to do--"

"I know," Jensen interrupts right back.

"Listen up," Jeff says to Jensen. "It's not doing anyone any good if you end up in the same damn place you were when you walked away from everything."

Jensen looks at Jeff and shrugs. "I think it's a _break_."

Jeff nods, but opens his mouth to argue again, Jensen can tell, so he doesn't give him the chance. "Suck it up, Morgan. Go be a kept man for a couple of weeks and try not to fuck things up before you get back." He takes a deep breath before he continues, "I can go find Sandy's friends and see if they still need a massage therapist. Or go up to Haiku and talk to Alex, see if he can use an extra pair of hands with the construction stuff until I figure out things for real."

Once he's saying things out loud, ideas start bubbling up, crazy things that he has no idea where they're coming from, things like music and photography and he doesn't even know what else. From the little _See, I told you so_ glint in Sandy's eye, she knows exactly what's going on.

"Hey, Jeff," Jared calls from the door, holding his phone away from his mouth. "It's looking like a 20-foot face by tomorrow morning. They're hitting it at sun-up; two hours there and I still can get some serious work done down here at Hook."

Jeff glances at Steve and Jensen before he answers, "Pour that goddamned beer out, if you're hitting Jaws tomorrow." Jared grins and hands the beer to Danneel as she walks in.

"Jaws?" Dani says, not really asking, and hands the beer to the next guy walking in behind her. "You're on."

Steve puts both hands on Jensen's shoulders; Jensen relaxes into the touch. "I can FedEx Josh my keys and a ticket," he says, more thinking out loud than anything. "He'll bitch about it, but he'll get my car from LA. Mac isn't going to say no to a car of her own."

When Jensen tilts his head back, Steve's smile is all about the eyes.

"What?" Jensen says.

"Nothing," Steve says, smiling a little more. "It just sounds like a plan."

"Yeah," Jensen says, smiling back. "It does."

**Author's Note:**

> Lots and lots of people took a crack at this one, starting with [](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/profile)[**withdiamonds**](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/), who read it when it was barely there and then let me whine at her for months on end. [](http://maschalismos.livejournal.com/profile)[**maschalismos**](http://maschalismos.livejournal.com/) read and poked and made suggestions and was generally an all-around good egg who let me bounce ideas off her randomly. [](http://gracecourage.livejournal.com/profile)[**gracecourage**](http://gracecourage.livejournal.com/) took on the first draft and talked out all the things that didn't work for her, and then did it again, even with computer problems. [](http://aquamia.livejournal.com/profile)[**aquamia**](http://aquamia.livejournal.com/) dug in and helped focus me on character motivations. [](http://wendy.livejournal.com/profile)[**wendy**](http://wendy.livejournal.com/) read a later version and pointed out where I still needed paper over some of the cracks.  
>  And [](http://without-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**without_me**](http://without-me.livejournal.com/) is really to blame for all of this. She got me started on all this, though I doubt she thought it was going to take this long to finish. She deserves some kind of medal for that, PLUS the big shiny gold star for reading for grammar and such, as well as characters and what little plot there is.  
>  The collages were done by [](http://theantimodel.livejournal.com/profile)[**theantimodel**](http://theantimodel.livejournal.com/) and I'm still astonished at how well they capture the mood I had in my head.
> 
> Also! A podfic of this, read by [](http://chemm80.livejournal.com/profile)[**chemm80**](http://chemm80.livejournal.com/) is available here:   
>   
>  http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/caught-inside  
> http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/caught-inside-audiobook


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